Fans of Eloisa James & Julia Quinn discussion
Monday Puzzler
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A Proposal—and a Counter Proposal: Monday Puzzler August 5
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I think I need to have a copy of this. Well, once I know what it is.
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I wanted to keep reading this. I'm in love with the characters already. I can't wait to find out want it is so I can run out and get a copy.
I know I've read this. Just can't remember the book or the author. Although, I have a pretty good guess about the author. :)
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Okay now that's just sad that I didn't remember that, because I read the book, I loved the book and right now I'm kicking myself for not remembering this part in the book. I think a reread is in order before the next one comes out.
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No credit for me. I had no clue; but the conversation is so funny once I thought about it.
I thought I'd read all of Balogh's books, but I guess I missed this one. It goes on the TBR (soon) list.
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Thanks Janga. Off topic: I was trying to remember my favorite Balogh series (Suddenly), but I confused her with another favorite, Lisa Kleypas and the yummy Cam Rohan, a character who stayed with me long after (obviously) I finished the book. Are you the same Janga who wrote about gypsy heroes a few years ago?
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Off topic: I was trying to remember my favorite Balogh series (Suddenly), but I confused her with another favorite, Lisa Kleypas and the yummy Cam Rohan, a character who stayed with ..."
I am the same person. In fact, I write about them twice: once for the Romance Vagabonds, a now-defunct blog where I joined Manda Collins, Lindsey Faber, and Elodie Michaels for a couple of years and, more recently, on Heroes & Heartbreakers. I have a weakness for gypsy heroes.
Cam Rohan is one of my most favorite (and most memorable) herod ever. :)
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“A wife from the middle classes would not be able to help me,” he said.
“But I would?”
He hesitated. “Yes,” he said.
“This is not your only reason for wishing to marry me, though?” she asked.
He hesitated again. “No,” he said. “I had sex with you. I put you in danger of conceiving out of wedlock. There is no one else I want to marry— not at present, anyway. There would be passion in our marriage bed. On both our parts.”
“And it does not matter that we would be incompatible in every other way?” she said.
Again the hesitation. “I thought we might give it a try,” he said. She looked up again and met his gaze.
“Oh, Hero,” she said. “One gives painting a try when one has never held a brush in one’s hand before. Or climbing a steep cliff face when one is afraid of heights or eating an unfamiliar food when one does not really like the look of it. If one likes it, whatever it is, one can keep going. If one does not, one can stop and try something else. One cannot try marriage. Once one is in, there is no way out.”
“You would know,” he said. “You have tried it already. I will take my leave, then, ma’am. I hope you will not take a chill from your soaking and from standing in here in a dress designed for summer rather than early spring.”
He bowed stiffly. He was calling her ma’am; she was calling him Hero.
“And one tries courtship,” she said and looked down again. She closed her eyes. This was foolish. More than foolish. But perhaps he would continue on his way out of her life.
He did not. He straightened up and stayed where he was. There was a silence in which Heroine could hear that there had been no abatement in the force of the rain.
“Courtship?” he said. . . .
“I would not have you the subject of gossip,” he said.
“Oh, not gossip, Lord Hero,” she said. “Speculation. The ton loves nothing more during the Season than to play matchmaker or at least to speculate upon who is paying court to whom and what the outcome is likely to be. Word will soon have it that you are courting me.”
“And that I am a presumptuous devil,” he said, “who ought to be strung up from the nearest tree by his thumbs.”
She smiled. “There will of course be those who are outraged,” she said, “at you for your presumption, at me for encouraging it. And there will be those who are charmed by the romance of it all. There will be wagers made.”
Both his jaw and his eyes hardened.
“If you really wish to marry me,” she said, “you may court me through the coming Season, Lord Hero. There will be ample opportunity. . . .”
“You will marry me, then?” he asked, frowning.
“Very probably not,” she said. “But a marriage proposal is made after courtship, not before. Court me, then, and persuade me to change my mind if you do not change yours first.”
“How the devil,” he asked her, “am I to do that? I do not know the first thing about courtship.”
She smiled with the first genuine amusement she had felt for a long while. “You are in your thirties,” she said. “It is time you learned.”