Fans of Eloisa James & Julia Quinn discussion
Monday Puzzler
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14th October: A Slight Case of Lust at First Sight
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As I was reading the first couple paragraphs, I knew I hadn't read it, but as more details came along, I am pretty sure I've read it, I just can't remember what it was. Once I know, I'm thinking I'll have to re-read it.
I think I know it too! Or rather, I think I've read it too. I can't remember the book, though. LOL
Somewhat familiar, but it could be one of several books I read last year.
I was sure I knew this one, but when I picked up the book I thought it was, I realized it has to be something else. I'm stumped at present but fairly sure I'll recognize it when all is revealed!
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Different reasons. Because she really immerses herself and us in the period--both in the kinds of situations her characters face and in their daily activities.
For example, think about the plot of Slightly married. The reason that the hero was forced into the army is completely true to the period and would never happen today, and she also plays out beautifully what it does to the man. Deeply touching without in any way being anachronistic
Wow, what a coincidence. I just started reading Mary Balogh's Secret Mistress. I'll have to get Famous Heroine now.
Wonderful story, really enjoyed this one.
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Not only is the heroine wonderful in The Famous Heroine, so is the hero. Sir Francis choice of unusual clothes and colors is so unselfconscious and free!
"I have a small favor to ask of you," TITLED FRIEND said, causing HERO to swing around to look full at him, his eyebrows raised. He felt a flicker of interest. Life had been so desperately devoid of interest for weeks now. He must be impoverished indeed, he thought, if the mere mention of a favor he might do grabbed his whole attention. Perhaps his grace merely wished to know if a lock of his hair was sticking out at the back like a cup handle.
"My mother has arrived in town," TITLED FRIEND said, raising his quizzing glass to his eye and beginning a languid perusal of the occupants of the room through it, "with my two sisters and—a protégée."
The slight pause before the final words and the almost imperceptible pain in his friend's voice as the words were spoken alerted HERO to the fact that the small favor had something to do with the protégée. It would hardly concern FRIEND'S SISTER. She was betrothed to old What's-His-Name, who was in Vienna, reputedly dazzling the world with his diplomatic genius. And OTHER SISTER, though young and unattached, was unattached only because FRIEND had rejected a string of suitors whom he considered unworthy—if gossip had the right of it, as gossip had a habit of not always being. HERO was the son and brother of a duke, but it was extremely unlikely that he would ever attain the title himself since his brother had already been brilliantly prolific in the production of sons.
No, it could not be SISTER and would not be OTHER SISTER. It would be the protégée.
"I trust they are all in good health?" HERO said politely.
"Ah, yes, indeed," FRIEND said, his glass pausing for a moment and his lips pursing. Yes, she was pretty, HERO thought as he followed the line of FRIEND's quizzing glass to the young lady on whom it was trained. The quizzing glass resumed its journey. "I would appreciate it, old chap, if you would dance a set with the protégée. HEROINE." He said the name with something like distaste.
"Glad to," HERO said and wondered what was wrong with HEROINE. Apart from her name that was. Her two names did not blend together into anything resembling poetry or even pleasing symphony. "HEROINE?"
FRIEND sighed. "It is unlike my mother to act purely out of sentiment," he said. "But that appears to be what has happened in this case. She has taken the girl out of her own proper milieu and has brought her to town to present to the ton. It is her intention to find the girl a respectable husband."
HERO coughed delicately behind one lace-covered wrist.
"Oh, not you, old chap," his friend said hastily. "It is just that for all my mother's consequence and influence, I am still afraid HEROINE will not take. It would be an embarrassment to her grace as well as to the girl herself, I daresay. And therefore to me."
"Her own proper milieu?" HERO's curiosity was piqued. It seemed to him an eternity since he had felt anything as wildly exhilarating as curiosity.
"Her father could probably buy you and me up with the small change in his purse, HERO," FRIEND said, "and still have enough left to jingle in his pocket. He is a merchant from Bristol. He has recently bought property and set up as a gentleman. I believe his son has been to all the right schools and has taken up the practice of law. But there is the taint, you know, the lack of birth."
"Ah," HERO said and pictured himself dancing with the girl and having his ears murdered with an uncouth provincial accent. Even that prospect was not utterly displeasing. It would be amusing. How long it was since he had been amused! "And my dancing with her will help her to take, HERO?"
"Undoubtedly," FRIEND said after letting his glass pause on Lady Augusta Haville before he lowered it and observed his surroundings with his naked eye. "Everyone knows that you commune only with the most fashionable and the most lovely ladies, HERO. Your taste is legendary. You are a connoisseur of beauty, as you yourself just said. You have but to bow to a lady and a host of other men take particular notice. If you tread a measure with HEROINE, other gentlemen will flock to take your place. The girl will dance all night. She will be launched. Mama will be ecstatic. And I will be grateful."
HERO sifted through the flattery and decided that somewhere at the core of it was a sincere compliment. Was the girl so very dreadful, then? She was a merchant's daughter? A merchant with pretensions to gentility? Was she ghastly and vulgar? Why had the very fastidious FRIEND'S MOTHER taken her on? He decided to ask the question.
"She is your mother' protégée?" he said, phrasing the sentence politely as a question.
"She saved my nephew's life in Bath," FRIEND explained. "Jumped into the river when he was drowning and almost drowned herself while fishing him out. A damned heroic thing to do actually. We will be eternally in her debt, and I feel the debt personally as head of the family even though Henry belongs to George. But this seems a foolish way of paying it. Ah!"
His glass was to his eye again and directed at the doorway. HERO glanced that way too and saw the FRIEND'S MOTHER, her usual regal and beautiful self in purple, SISTER as beautiful and aloof as ever, OTHER SISTER as small and sweet and innocent as she had looked last year during her first Season, and—and another young lady, who must be the protégée.
She was tall, large—he caught his mind in the act of using the latter word. She was not fat. Nothing like fat. But there was something large about her. Voluptuous, he thought, was a more accurate word. If she ever appeared on the stage, she would draw men to the green room like bees to a flower.
It was an unkind thought. She was dressed in virginal white, like OTHER SISTER—it was rather unfortunate that she stood next to the younger sister—and the gown had been carefully designed to show somewhat less of her bosom than was fashionable. He suspected the restraining hand of the duchess. If the girl's gown had been designed according to strict fashion, cut lower—well, his temperature threatened to soar a couple of degrees at the very thought.
He found himself wondering what she must have looked like when she climbed out of the river in Bath after having saved FRIEND's nephew. His temperature did rise at least one degree.
"The protégée?" he asked FRIEND.
"You see what I mean?" FRIEND asked, setting aside his quizzing glass and looking as if he were girding his loins for unpleasant action. "She looks for all the world as if she should be in a damned green room."
Their minds sometimes moved along strange parallels, HERO thought.
"And my mother thinks to find her a respectable husband," FRIEND said with a sigh. "Come along, HERO. You did promise, did you not?"
She was not beautiful. Once the eye could be persuaded to rise above the level of the woman's neck, one could see that. Her features were too strong for true delicacy and her eyes were too wide-spaced and too candid to inspire lovelorn sighs. Her hair was unfortunately dressed. It was a rich chestnut color, it was true, and was abundant and shining and clean. But it was far too abundant for the curls and ringlets she wore. One found oneself picturing it worn down about her waist—with the bosom of her gown cut lower.
HERO fingered his quizzing glass and raised his eyebrows.
And then she saw him coming. Her hand shot to her mouth, her eyes lit up with unholy amusement, and she half turned her head as if to whisper something to OTHER SISTER. Then she noticed FRIEND, appeared to realize that the two of them were moving in her direction, and dropped her hand. She very noticeably blanked her eyes.
But there must have been a speck of dust on the floor in front of her, HERO thought afterward. There must have been. Certainly there was nothing else. Nothing that was visible. So it must have been something invisible over which she tripped. She did so quite inelegantly—not that there was an elegant way to trip, HERO might have realized if he had been at liberty to consider the matter—and with a little shriek.
HERO quickened his pace sufficiently to leap forward and save her from quite upending herself on the floor. For one moment before he set her to rights and stepped back in order to regard her with eyebrows that were raised again in polite inquiry, he felt the full impact of that remarkable voluptuous bosom against his chest. And for the same moment it seemed somehow irrelevant that her chemise and gown, his coat and waistcoat and shirt all separated his bare flesh from her bare flesh.
Quite irrelevant indeed. HERO wondered if Prinny was due at tonight's ball. If he was not, one was left to wonder why Lady Markley kept her ballroom so suffocatingly hot.
HEROINE, to whom FRIEND was proceeding to present him as if nothing untoward had happened even though for a moment he had closed his eyes in pained acknowledgment of the fact that one-half of the gathered guests must have witnessed the uncouth debut of his mother's protégée and the other half would be told of it within the next five minutes—HEROINE blushed a shade brighter than scarlet and then giggled.
"Oops!" she said, interrupting FRIEND's opening remarks. "I wonder if it is permitted to go back outside onto the staircase and try it all over again." She spoke rather too loudly and heartily and then giggled once more before suddenly sobering in order to pay attention to HERO's name and to his request that he might lead her into the opening set.
What a deliciously frightful young lady, he thought, feeling genuinely diverted for the first time in two or three eternities.