Dls’s Comments (group member since Sep 14, 2010)

Dls’s comments from the Fans of Eloisa James & Julia Quinn group.

Susan selected this--I'm just posting it for her.

“I should think it sounds beneficent. I’m offering you a title and fortune. All you have to do is lie back in the dark, then spend nine months swelling up like a tick. What could possibly deter any woman from accepting?”

“What, indeed. Perhaps a disinclination to feeling like a broodmare.”

They stepped off the pavement and crossed the street.
"A broodmare. Hm. I’m not certain I mine that comparison. If you’re a broodmare, that would make me the stud.”

“And there,” she said, “is the injustice of the world in a nutshell.”

He ignored her statement. “On reflection, I prefer ‘stallion.’”

“Never mind the horses!” She made a strangled noise of frustration. “It’s absurd to even suggest we could marry. We scarcely know each other. And what little we do know of each other, we don’t like.”

“I’m not aware of the courtship customs back in your quaint little inbreed village, but at my level of society, wedlock is a matter of two concerns: childbearing and finances. What I’m offering is a marriage of convenience. You’re living in poverty, and I” ---he laid his hand to his chest---“have a great deal of money. I need an heir, and you” ---he waved toward her with a flourish---“have the capacity to bear one. There’s no need to like each other. As soon as a child is conceived we’ll go separate ways.”

“Separate ways?”

“You’d have your own house in the country. I'll have no further need of you then.”

When they turned onto the busier lane, he tugged down the brim of his hat and turned up the collar of his coat. Night was falling, but the moon was bright. He obviously didn’t want to draw attention. Sympathy breezed into[heroine's] heart like an unwelcome visitor.

“You’re assuming, “she continued, “that your theoretical child would be male. What if you fathered a girl? Or five of them?”

He shrugged. “You’re the vicar’s daughter. Pray for a boy.”

“You are terrible.”

“Since we are about personal failings, you are irrational. You’re allowing pride to cloud your common sense. Spare yourself the effort of argument and skip to the inevitable conclusion.”

“I conclude that his conversation is madness. I don’t understand why you keep speaking as though you’d marry me.”

:I don’t understand why you keep speaking as though I won’t.”

“You are a duke. I am a seamstress. What else is there to be said?”

Ok time to post the answer!

I definitely don’t know this. Very intriguing

Sure send it to me will PM my email

I had to check to be sure —yes I know this one. The start of a great series.

I thought the Governess Game was pleasant but I was not in love with it the way I have felt about other books by Dare.

This is Mr Impossible by Loretta Chase. If you haven’t read it...do.

Once again I need to post early, but won't reveal the answer until Tuesday night.

If you have read this, I’m pretty sure you’ll know the book. The voice is just that unmistakable.

Hero had not failed to notice that his comments about the French distracted Heroine from asking the logical question: What will they do to my brother when they find out he can’t read the papyrus?
It was a question that hero had rather not answer. He did not count brother’s life worth a groat once the villains discovered their error. He doubted the man’s life would be worth much even if he could read the papyrus.

Still, there was a chance. In brother’s place, hero would pretend and prevaricate, putting off the moment of truth as long as possible. Meanwhile, he’d be looking for a way to escape.

If the villains did discover the truth sooner than was convenient, one might be able to persuade them to demand a ransom. That way, at least, he would tell them, they needn’t come away empty-handed.
Hero kept these thoughts to himself and concentrated on keeping heroine’s mind from dwelling unhappily on her brother.
Fortunately, hero had a natural talent for driving others distracted.
Because she’d found his renaming the boy Tom so provoking, the first thing hero did when they’d mounted their donkeys was christen his Cleopatra.

“That is not the creature’s name” said heroine. She told him the Arabic name.

“I can’t pronounce it,” hero said.

“You don’t even try” she said.

“I don’t understand why these people don’t speak English,” he said. “It’s so much simpler.”

He could not see her face—she’d put on the evil veil—but he heard her huff of exasperation.

They set out at a surprisingly fast clip, considering how narrow, congested and busy the streets were. He thought it was wonderful: the donkeys trotting steadily on their way while carts, horses, and camels came straight at them; the drivers running alongside and ahead, calling out incomprehensibly and waving sticks, trying to clear a path while everyone appeared to ignore them.

He praised the donkeys to their drivers, congratulated the beasts on particularly narrow escapes, and told the men anecdotes about London hackneys.

Heroine bore it for as long as she could, which was not very long, before she exploded, “They have no idea what you’re saying!”

“Well, they’ll never learn, will they, if one doesn’t make an effort,” he said.
If the streets hadn’t been so noisy he was sure he’d have heard her teeth grinding.

She said nothing more, but hero was confident she was too preoccupied with breathtaking stupidity to fret overmuch about her brother.

Still hero was not a man to leave anything to chance.

When they reached their destination, he was off his mount even before it had come to a complete halt, and instantly at heroine’s side.
He reached up and grasped the lady firmly at the waist.

“That is not nec-“ she broke off as he lifted her up from the elaborate saddle. Instinctively she grasped his shoulders. Smiling into her veiled countenance, hero held her at eye level for a moment. Then slowly, slowly, he lowered her to the ground.

She did not immediately let go of his shoulders.

He did not immediately let go of her waist.

She remained utterly still, looking up at him.

He couldn’t see her face, but he could hear the hurried in and out of her breath.

Then she let go and pushed away from him, and turned away in that quick angry flurry he found so delicious.

“You are absurd,” she said. “There is no need to show off your strength.”

“That hardly wanted strength,” he said. “You weigh far less than I’d have thought. It’s the layers and layers of mourning that fooled me.” Not completely though. There was the walk.

“I can only hope that you will be as diligent about finding my brother as you are about ascertaining the dimensions of my person,” she said crossly.
By this time the gatekeeper had appeared. He looked to hero, but heroine got in the way and spoke in impatient Arabic.

The gate opened, and they entered the courtyard. Another servant appeared and led them into and through the house.

As they navigated the labyrinth common to Cairo’s better houses, heroine dropped hero a few hints.

“Do keep your mind on why we are here,” she said in an undertone. “We can’t afford to waste time. Please resist the temptation to give Lord N’s servants nicknames. I doubt he will appreciate it, and I had rather not spend valuable minutes smoothing matters over. And please try not to wander from the subject. Or tell anecdotes. You are not here to entertain anybody. You are here to obtain information. Is that clear?”

“You’re so forgetful,” he said. “Don’t you remember telling me that you’re the brain and I’m the brawn?” Naturally I expect you to do all the talking. And naturally I shall knock heads and toss people out of windows as required. Or did I misunderstand you? Did you want me to think, too?”

To my surprise I had six downloads Tuesday. Reading Raeanne Thayne’s latest, and I liked Sarah Morgan’s latest. Have the new Shalvis, Jodi Thomas and Kelly Bowen to go and saving the new Putney for last

Definitely haven’t read this .

Midsummer Moon by Laura Kinsale, one of the all time great romance authors who stopped writing maybe a decade ago.

Manda if you try one let me know what you think.

I just read all of Judith Flanders four detective novels. The heroine is a middle aged book editor with a wonderful line in snark. (That seems to be Flanders natural voice as it’s also in the blogs and obituaries she writes. And her primary career is as a historian.) The plots are original and the publishing world is well done. And I like the hero.
They do have two flaws though. She tends to get into TSTL situations. And while I like both hero and heroine there is absolutely no sense in the books of what attracts them to each other.
Despite that they are tons of fun and she will be an auto buy.

I'm posting very early because I won't have time the rest of the weekend, but I'll wait until Tuesday to post the answer.

This is one of the best “meet cute “ scenes I know.

For the fourth time, His Grace, the Duke of D lifted the knocker with his free hand and brought the tarnished brass crashing down on its mottled-green base. For the fourth time, the sound echoed on the other side of the oaken door, unanswered. Hero’s mouth drew back in the faintest hint of a grimace.

He and his horse appeared to be the only civilized creatures within five square miles. Had he thought otherwise, he never would have allowed himself such a show of emotion. The overgrown Tudor walls rose above him, gray stone and neglect, an affront to the values of ten generations of [hero’s family]. Admittedly, from where he stood on the threshold hero could see the romantic possibilities of the place: shaped gables and tall oriel windows and dark spreading trees, but at the very thought of such sentimentality those [family] ghosts seemed to stare in haughty disapproval at his back. Without conscious intent his own aristocratic features hardened into that hereditary expression of disdain.

Princes had been known to quail before such a look. There had been a few kings, too, and innumerable queens and duchesses and courtly ladies, all struck dumb beneath the [family] stare. Four centuries of power and politics had evolved and improved the expression, until by hero’s time it was a weapon of chilling efficiency. He himself had learned it early—at his grandfather’s elegant knee.

As it was, when at last the rusty lock creaked and crashed and the door opened on a complaining groan, the figure peering out from the gloom received the full force of His Grace’s pitiless mien. The young maid would have been forgiven by a host of knowledgeable Whigs if she’d turned tail and run in the instant before hero recalled himself and softened his expression. But she did not. She merely wiped her hands on a grimy white apron and lifted a pair of vaguely frowning gray eyes. “Yes?” she asked, in a voice which might have been testy had it not been so preoccupied. “What is it?”

Hero held out his card in one immaculately gloved hand.

She took the card. Without even glancing at it, she stuck the engraved identification into one bulging pocket of her apron.

Hero watched his calling card disappear, shocked to the core of his pedigreed soul at such poorly trained service. “Mr. L is at home?” he prompted, keeping his voice quietly modulated. She might be a country mouse of a maid, a shade too softly rounded to be in vogue, but she was a pretty chit with those misty-gray eyes and elegant cheekbones, made more striking by the stark simplicity of her coiled chestnut hair. Not that His Grace the Duke of D was in the habit of dallying with housemaids—she was not at all in his usual style in any case—but he found no advantage in needlessly frightening her. Hero even allowed himself a moment’s human pleasure, his glance resting briefly on her full lower lip before he looked up and lifted one eyebrow in expectant question.

She blinked at him. He found himself experiencing a peculiar sensation. Her eyes held his, but it was as if she did not even see him standing there, but looked past him at some distant horizon. Her mouth puckered. She lifted her hand, resting one delicate forefinger on that sweetly shaped lower lip.

“Square the coefficient of the diameter of the number three strut,” she murmured.

“I beg your pardon?”

She blinked again and dropped her hand. Her eyes came into soft focus. “Can you remember that?”

“I’m afraid I don’t….”

His voice trailed off as she rummaged in her huge pocket and drew out his calling card. After another moment’s search, she located a pencil and scribbled something on the back of his card. “There,” she said with husky satisfaction. She dropped the card into her pocket and looked up at him with an absent smile. “Who are you?”

His earlier affront at her excruciatingly bad training returned, cooling his momentary startlement back to full reason. “I believe I delivered my card,” he said pointedly.

“Oh.” A becoming blush spread up from her modest collard, but he forced himself to ignore it. Well, not to concentrate on it, at any event. She had skin like an August peach, soft and golden and touched with pink.

She was rummaging again in her apron. The Pocket, as he termed it to himself, seemed to be burgeoning with peculiar paraphernalia. A jay’s feather, a tiny telescope, a tangled length of wire, and a flat-toothed metal disk with a hole in the center—all appeared from the depths into which his card had vanished. She looked down, poking out the tip of her tongue in a child’s gesture of concentration.

It was not The Pocket so much as the sleepy hedgehog she produced that left him nonplussed.

Ok Rachel time to post the answer.

I have no idea.

Hi
I haven’t heard from Rachel. Can anyone else post if I don’t hear back in a few hours?
If not I will tonight.
Deb

I have mostly taken a break from Romance and been reading Michael Gilbert novels and also The Goblin Emperor. But I’m ready to head back to romance and looking for ideas.

I got this recommendation from Janga as well. She read so widely and made so many wonderful reading recommendations.

Oh I love her books. And a perfect scene for the end of summer