More Than a Mistress, Chapter Eight

This is it, the chapter where I predicted things would get physical.  In the last chapter, Jane felt very aware of the Duke "as a man" and the Duke felt it was really important for Jane to know that he hadn't slept with Lady Oliver (though not important enough for him to actually tell her).  Let's see if my prediction comes true.

The chapter opens with Jane discovering the Duke in the library with a candlestick his new crutches.  She is all flustered because "she had not remembered that he was quite so tall."  They go for a stroll in the garden and then rest with "her shoulder almost touching his arm."  The Duke comments that he no longer takes his health and mobility for granted, and Jane reflects inwardly that she no longer takes her freedom and non-fugitive-status for granted, either.  We learn that her parents died within a year of each other, leaving her with her father's cousin, who had also inherited his title.  The cousin both resented her and courted her favour.  One more piece of the puzzle as to why she killed (?) the Earl's son, but none of it makes sense yet.

The Duke hits on Jane again, commenting that she makes him feel very "unsaintly".  Then he leans into her so that his arm is against her shoulder!  Yikes!  She can't move any further away from him on the bench, so she stands up.  Darn, so close to a make-out session!  "That feeling of almost unbearable tension was happening altogether too often. (...) She could not deny that the sight of him - even the very thought of him - could quicken her blood.  That the careless touch of his hand could make her ache for more."  So yeah, she's all wound up after that hot arm-on-shoulder action.  Though Jane tells the Duke that she will never be in the mood for a dalliance (that's how they said "DTF" in ye olde classy times), the narrative gives us hope: "it was a statement and a resolve that were to be tested later that very night."  YES.  I am so winning this bet!

The next scene has Jocelyn suffering insomnia, which he attributes to his new boring life as an invalid.  He is also feeling incredibly restless.  "He could feel temptation grab almost irresistibly at him - the sort of temptation that had often got him into trouble when he was a boy until he had learned to curb his urges." He usually deals with his urges by "go[ing] to a woman and stay[ing] with her until there was no energy left for anything but sleep and a return to his normal way of life."  Sometime past midnight, he can resist no longer, and hoists himself out of bed.  He puts on a shirt and pantaloons, making him deliciously underdressed for the time, and heads downstairs.

Meanwhile, it turns out Jane also cannot sleep.  She is worried about the Duke's recovery, specifically the fact that it is going well and thus she will soon be out of a job (and away from a safe haven).  She overheard a visitor that morning speculating that perhaps Jardine is not dead after all, and also varying descriptions of what the would-be murderess looks like: "a black-eyed, black-haired witch as ugly as sin, or a blond Siren as beautiful as an angel.  Take your pick; I have heard both descriptions and several others."  Jane again wonders what she should do, and even considers confronting the earl at the hotel - "It would be such a relief to come out of hiding, to have everything out in the open."  But then again, confessing would likely mean being "thrown in jail.  To be publicly tried.  To be hanged."  She is not actually sure whether an earl's daughter could be sentenced to hang, as an earl could not.  Interesting, but I suppose not all that surprising, that different classes of people would have different criminal sentences.

Anyway, she gives up on sleeping and decides to go down to the library and get a book.  She puts a cloak on, but does not "dress or put on shoes".  I'm not sure what she's actually wearing under the cloak, then, but trust that she is suitably unclad for the good times ahead.

As she descends the stairs, she hears piano music and is totally out of ideas as to who could be playing it.  When she reaches the door and sees that it is the Duke, she is transfixed.  The Duke is "playing without sheet music, his eyes closed, a look almost of pain on his face.  He was playing something hauntingly beautiful, something Jane had never heard before." That's right.  Those 'urges' the Duke was having trouble dealing with?  The ones that usually require a night of lovemaking to dispel?  They are piano-playing urges.

Jane is awestruck: "She had not believed there could be another musician with a talent to match her mother's."  Minutes pass, the music ends, the Duke's eyes open, and ... "What the devil are you doing here?" he thunders.  She apologizes, and his eyes narrow as he recovers from his shock.  "I dabble, Miss Ingleby.  I was amusing myself, unaware that I had an audience."  Jane realizes that he has "retreated (...) behind a familiar mask.  She had never thought of him before as a man who needed defenses."  So he plays piano just like Mother used to do, and he is a misunderstood man with hitherto unplumbed depths of character.  BINGO, Jane is in love.  Oh, and it doesn't hurt that he's handsome and tall.

But Jane, you know, she says what she thinks, and she isn't about to let the Duke describe his playing as mere dabbling.  "You have been gifted with a wondrous and rare talent.  And you were not amusing yourself.  You were embracing your talent with your whole soul."  The Duke calls this poppycock, and declares that "I have never even had a lesson, Jane, and I do not read music.  There goes your theory."  Except that actually, that just makes her point even more effective.  Because if two people played an incredible piece of music, which one would impress you more?  The one who has had decades of training, or the one who has never seen a piano before?  Way to argue, your Grace.  Also, this declaration makes Jane realize that he must have composed the piece he was playing.  In the middle of her being all shocked and amazed at this, the Duke goes and changes the subject to, you know, his favourite subject.

"You do not wear it loose even to bed?"

Yes, he's talking about her hair again, which by the way is in a thick braid down her back.  She doesn't comment.  "I suppose that playing the pianoforte, composing music, loving it, is something quite unworthy of a Dudley male," she points out.  The Duke agrees that it borders on the effeminate and confesses that when his father caught him playing as a youth, he was beaten so severely that he couldn't sleep on his back.  Jane wonders inwardly, "why was it that men of that type did not realize that the mature, balanced person, regardless of gender, was a fine mix of masculine and feminine qualities?", which is a fine and enlightened perspective.  The Duke starts playing again, and then asks her to sing.

Well, spoiler alert, Jane has Like The Best Voice Ever OMG.  Unlike Balogh's description of Jane's inadequate piano playing, and the Duke's amazing piano playing, we don't really get a description of what is so great about Jane's voice.  All we get is the Duke's response, which is, "I have never in my life heard such a lovely voice. Or one that adapted itself so perfectly to the music and the sentiment of the song."  The moment passes and suddenly Jane becomes aware that she is sitting beside the Duke in the music room wearing only a nightgown and a cloak in the middle of the night.  But she can't think of any way to leave "without making a grand production out of it."  Hmm, have you tried, "It's late, I'm going to bed now.  More singalongs tomorrow!"

The Duke tells her that a talent like hers ought to be shared, not hidden from the world, which is pretty much exactly the same thing she said to him ten minutes ago.  Then he takes her hand and "half the air seemed to have been sucked from the room."

"You ought not to have come down.  You have caught me at a bad time," the Duke says, which is a lovely bit of victim-blaming or at the very least personal accountability avoidance.  Come on Duke, don't buy into rape culture!  No means no!  Except then, "Yes," was all Jane could think of to say.  "Everything except her common sense yearned for her to stay."

"Don't go," he says in an "unusually husky" voice.  Having a husky voice is a sure sign of imminent sexy times.  If Jane's voice is then described as "breathy", then we are Go For Launch.

But Jane says not a word, just walks over to him where he sits on the piano bench and places her hands on his head "as if in benediction".  His hands on her waist pull him towards her and he buries his face between her breasts.  (Which always seems like a super sexy idea, but really, how does he breathe in there?)  After they revel in that awkward physical position for a few minutes, she kneels down on the floor between his legs, resting her hands on his "firm, muscled" thighs.  Then "he cupped her face with his hands before kissing her."

Now, first of all, let me say a BOO-YAH for correctly predicting the hotness of this chapter.  But secondly, if he is sitting on a piano bench and she is kneeling on the floor, her head is not in optimal kissing position (not for his mouth, anyway).  He would have to lean over far enough that frankly, a sexual partner would become obsolete.  Are you following my meaning here?  Okay, MAYBE she is on her knees but sitting up (as opposed to her thighs resting on her calves).  Otherwise he is performing a truly ungraceful hunchback manoeuvre right now.

Anyway!  Kissing!  Jane has never been kissed like this.  Forget that Charles character, THIS was kissing.  Her body "sizzled with awareness and ached with desire".  And so on.  Then the Duke says, "We will have to punish each other for this in the morning," and I'm not sure if he means the fun kinky kind of punishment or the kind where they just pretend the hot makeout session didn't happen.  "I am just a rake, my dear, with nothing on my mind except covering you on the floor here and taking my wicked pleasure deep inside your virgin body."  (Jane, to her credit, does not swoon.)  "You think that what has happened is beautiful.  I can see it in your eyes.  It is not. That is merely what an experienced rake can make a woman think.  In reality it is the simple, lustful, raw desire for sex.  Go to bed now. Alone."

Oh, this Duke fellow is confusing.  In the last chapter he really wanted Jane to know that he wasn't as much of a rake as his reputation made him out to be, but now he is saying the opposite.  And while there is nothing wrong with the simple, lustful, raw desire for sex, he is making innocent Jane feel ashamed of her participation in that desire.  What an ass.  Jane "searched his eyes with her own, looking into the mask that he had settled firmly in place."  Oh, I get it.  Every time he acts like an ass, it's because he's wearing a 'mask'.  And when he isn't being a jerk, that's the real him.  I guess it is Jane's job to help him 'take off the mask' and become 'his true self'.  Okay then.

She goes off to bed and only then realizes she never managed to get a book from the library.  But she doesn't go back.

More Than a Mistress, Chapter Seven

I have not been very disciplined about these recaps.  Shame on me.  I have already had to renew the book from the library TWICE, which is sort of appalling, because who takes nine weeks to read a romance novel?  Apparently, I do.  Anyway, on with Chapter Seven!

The Duke's rehabilitation, and Jane's employment, is halfway over.  Jane dreads leaving Dudley House in only a week and a half, especially since she knows from overheard conversations that the Earl of Durbury is still in London searching for her.  But there are other things to dread as well, namely the fact that "[the Duke] saw her as a woman, and she, God help her, was very much aware of him as a man." 

The Duke commands Jane to show him her hands, and as she feels "the pull of his masculinity" he notes that her hands are smooth with no callouses.  Another bit of evidence that she is not the middle-class servant she presents herself to be.  The Duke doesn't even seem surprised - he just goes into a little speech about her hands: "They are beautiful hands, as one might expect.  They match the rest of your person.  They change bandages gently without causing undue pain.  One wonders what other magic they could create with their touch.  Jane, you could be the most sought-after courtesan in all of England, if you chose."  I'm guessing this is not usually the way one talks to one's servants, but then again, the Duke has pretty much concluded she isn't actually a servant girl.  Still holding onto her hands, his eyes "burn[ing] upward into her own," (that sounds painful), he asks if she can play the piano.  Jane feels trapped but is determined not to show it: she reflects that "by just a slight jerking on her hands he could have her down across him in a moment."  Down across him!  Oooh, titillating!  Jane just might feel more "aware" of him if she suddenly found herself across his lap.

Jane admits that she has played a little, and he insists that she demonstrate.  She does.  He orders her to come sit with him and then gives his feedback on her performance.  "You play without flair.  You play each note as if it were a separate entity that had no connection with what came before or after.  You depress each key as if it were simply an inanimate strip of ivory, as if you believed it impossible to coax music out of it.  You must have had an inferior teacher."

Jane bristled at this insult to her teacher, who was (unknown to the Duke, of course) her beloved mother.  She describes her teacher as someone who "could make it seem as if the music came from her rather than from a mere instrument ... as if it came through her from some - oh, from some heavenly source."

If it seems like I'm quoting a lot of stuff about playing piano, that's true, but there's a reason for it.  The book-related reason will become obvious soon, but the me-related reason is that I am a singer from a family of musicians and I was impressed by the Duke's comments on musicality.  It would have been easy to just bluster on about Jane's playing being terrible without actually giving the reasons why; it also would have been easy to have the Duke say all kinds of reasons why, but for those reasons to not make any kind of sense.  Balogh nails it here, giving real feedback that actually would make a piano performance pretty unspecial.

A few days later, the Duke is going crazy not being able to move around, so he decides to get himself crutches.  This is at least partially due to his finding out that he is the subject of gossip, and not for the usual reasons: the Forbes brothers - brothers of Lady Oliver, the woman the Duke supposedly slept with, prompting the duel in the first chapter - are making noises about defending their sister's honour, and claiming that the Duke is only pretending to be wounded, because he is afraid of fighting all of them.  The Duke finds himself reflecting that "there was something remarkably silly and meaningless in his whole style of life," he concludes that the solution to this is not to try and find some meaning, but to get out "and back about his usual activities," to save his sanity.  All this damnable thinking can be depressing!  He is already learning how to make conversation with a woman, for pity's sake!

Then who should arrive but Lady Oliver herself!  "Bloody hell!" the Duke roars, realizing that "she had come at a time when half the fashionable world was out and about and might happen by and see her or evidence of her presence," such as Lord Oliver's town coach which is parked outside the Duke's bachelor abode.  He is about to order his servant to kick her out, when Lady Oliver sees herself into the sitting room and greets him "in a sweet, breathy voice."  Oh, suddenly I know why she's here!  It's to make Jane jealous so she will realize that she wants to sleep with the Duke!

Lady Oliver wafts through the room (yes, wafts) and raises a handkerchief to her lips and generally plays the part of a woman of sentiment who is in great distress.  This is similar to the way Lady Heyward acts, all hysterics and goings-on, and I suppose these two characters are meant to show how different Jane is by merit of not being a feather-brained doofus.  No wonder the Duke doesn't make conversation with women, if this is what women are usually like. 

The Duke gives Lady Oliver quite the cold shoulder despite her fawning, and then tells Jane to show the Lady out.  Lady Oliver tries to get the Duke to admit he has been pining for her, as she has for him, but he cruelly comments that he hasn't spared her a thought in weeks, and he will continue to spare her no thoughts once she is gone.  She tells him that her brothers mean to kill him, and then bursts into tears.  "You are hard-hearted, Tresham!" she wept.  "I thought you loved me."  Then she leaves, "in a tragic performance that surely would have brought whistles from the pit of any theatre."  Hee!  Balogh knows how to bring a laugh.

The Duke immediately asks Jane her opinion of his "paramour".  Jane says that she is lovely, but that the Duke needn't have been so cruel to her.  "You lay with her and made her love you.  But now you have spurned her when she braved propriety in order to come and see you and warn you."  But remember, the Duke doesn't believe in love! He replies, "The only person Lady Oliver loves is Lady Oliver.  And she braved propriety so that the beau monde will believe that she and I are [...] continuing our liaison."  Then he asks her how she became so convinced that he slept with Lady Oliver.  Well, he DID just call her his paramour, but apparently that doesn't mean anything.  "Did I [confirm it]? Or did I just allow you to make the assumption?"  This is the second time he has made comments about sleeping with Lady Oliver, and then tried to make Jane think that he didn't sleep with her, or at least that he didn't SAY he slept with her.  Not that he cares what she thinks, of course: "To deny it would be to give the impression that your good opinion matters to me, Jane.  I could not have you believing that, could I?"  Well then, you COULD stop talking about it.  Just a thought.

But Jane is starting to wonder, now.  If you didn't sleep with her, she asks the Duke, "why did you not deny it?  Why did you fight a duel and risk death?"  The answer, the Duke tells her condescendingly, is that a gentleman should not publicly contradict a lady.  When she quite correctly points out that this is ridiculous, that he is letting fashionable society believe the worst of him, the Duke replies, "But they love me for it.  I am the bad, dangerous Duke of Tresham.  How I would disappoint the ton if I were to insist [on my innocence].  I often flirt with married ladies.  It is expected of me."  This is starting to be a theme, the Duke's need to uphold a reputation not as an individual but as his title, the Duke - a title and reputation owned by his father and grandfather before him.  He's starting to seem like kind of a bitter dude, all this sneering and posturing, all because it's expected of him.

Also, I looked it up and ton means high society.  You're welcome.

So the Duke and Jane have some more verbal sparring, and then he uses the word "Please" and also calls her Miss Ingleby instead of Jane.  Then he wonders, "Why had it seemed so important to him, despite his denial, that she know the truth about Lady Oliver?  Why had he wanted Jane Ingleby to know that he had never bedded Lady Oliver? Or any other married lady, for that matter?"  Well, we readers know why.  BECAUSE ROMANCE NOVEL, that's why. 

By the way, Jane still doesn't know 'the truth'. She thinks he is lying to her so that he can laugh at her naivete.  Way to communicate, romantic hero.

Next chapter is the one that I predicted would see intimate physical contact.  Will it happen?  Stay tuned.

More Than a Mistress, Chapter Six

The chapter opens with a second meeting between the Earl of Durbury and Mick, the runner who has been hired to find (the person we now know is) Jane.  Except she is referred to as “Lady Sara Illingsworth”.  Oh well, no surprise that ‘Jane’ would be using an alias, being on the run and all.  And no surprise that as I have long suspected, she is actually a Lady.  Mick has had no luck finding her.  Mick and the Earl have different ideas about how best to pursue the fugitive: Mick wants to ask around at the pawnbrokers to see if a lovely young lady has brought in any priceless jewels lately, but the Earl insists that Lady Sara would not have pawned the jewelry and refuses to even give a description of the missing piece(s).  The Earl wants Mick to look for her at the employment agencies and other likely employers, thinking Sarah may have found a job.  Mick wonders why a woman would “steal a fortune and then neglect to spend any of it,” and reflects that “there [is] more to this whole business than [meets] the eye.”  Mick questions the Earl about any likely aliases, and the Earl confirms that Sara’s mother always called her Jane. 

So, the Earl’s story and Jane’s reflection are not so much with the matchy-matchy here, and even Mick is starting to think that it’s “a very strange business indeed”.  If the Earl’s son is on his deathbed, why did he leave his bedside to come to London?  Did Sara/Jane steal a fortune, as accused by the Earl, or simply one bracelet and a bit of money, as Jane’s internal monologue would have us believe?  If she did steal a fortune, where is it?  And why is the Earl acting so cagey, refusing to give Mick the details he needs to solve the case?  It’s a mystery right inside a romance novel.  Bazinga!

Back to the Duke and Jane.  The Duke is very, very, very bored, because he is an invalid and Buzzfeed hasn’t been invented yet so he has nothing to do.  Jane has become his constant companion, and he isn’t sure how to feel about that.  She takes good care of him, changing his bandage and moving his cushion, and once massaging his thigh, which was both “magically soothing” and “alarmingly arousing”.  He teaches her how to play chess, and they also pass the time “merely talk[ing]”.  The Duke notes that “it was strange to him to talk to a woman.  He was adept at chitchatting socially with ladies.  He was skilled at wordplay with courtesans.  But he could not recall simply talking with any woman.”  I wonder what the difference is between “chitchatting socially” and “simply talking”?  I suppose there is some posturing going on with the latter, what with the Duke’s reputation as a ladykiller to uphold.  I guess he isn’t doing that with Jane.

Because romance cannot blossom without the emphasis of petty disagreements, Tresham picks a fight with Jane about the plot of Gulliver’s Travels, which she is reading to him.  He displays an awesome grasp of sarcasm with the line, “You are such a restful companion.  You put words into my mouth and thereby release my from the necessity of having to think and speak for myself.”  Oh, snap!  He decides they should talk instead, and asks her about her past, which of course is not going to go well.  Jane maintains the falsehood that she was raised in an orphanage but doesn’t give details about what it was like.  When he pushes her to comment on loneliness, she responds that “Aloneness is not always the same thing as loneliness … Not if one learns to like oneself and one’s own company.  It is possible to feel lonely even with mother and father and brothers and sisters if one basically does not like oneself [and feels] not worthy of love.” 

This touches a nerve and Tresham snaps that she is right.  Jane immediately senses what’s going on, and asks if that is what happened to him.  He thinks about dismissing her for her impertinence at asking such an intimate question, but then remembers that he’s the one who started this line of questioning.  “He had never had conversations, even with his male friends.”  Which again makes me think that ‘conversation’ must have a different meaning to the Duke, because he had loads of conversations with his friends in the last chapter.  Anyway, he takes the plunge and starts telling Jane all about his past.  Jane continues to be supernaturally insightful and notes that Tresham seems to have some very definite ideas about what it means to be a Dudley: more boisterous and quarrelsome than most.  The Duke considers “his family, the vision of themselves and their place in the scheme of things that had been bred into them from birth onward.”  He has no useful answer, though, just points out that if Jane had known his father and grandfather, she wouldn’t ask this question.  Nor would she ask the next one, which is whether Tresham feels he must live up to their reputation, and whether he does so by choice or feels trapped in the role. 

Jane lists the various observations she has made about Tresham’s character and actions, including his risk-taking in duels and curricle racing.  Tresham responds that he wasn’t always this way, and that his father “rescued” him by making sure he took the “final step” in his education.  He obviously doesn’t remember this fondly, as he comments that Jane might in fact be fortunate to have never known her parents.  Then we get to hear the Duke’s opinion of love.

“If love is a disinterested devotion to the beloved, Jane, then indeed there is no such thing.  There is only selfishness, a dedication to one’s own comfort, which the beloved is used to enhance.  Dependency is not love.  Domination is not love.  Lust is certainly not it, though it can be a happy enough substitute on occasion.”

(I’m betting that romance novels where one character doesn’t believe in love, but then comes to see the error of his/her ways, are totally commonplace.)

Once the gates have opened, Tresham can’t stop talking about his past.  His parents didn’t live together, but saw each other for only a few minutes three or four times a year.  They both had lovers.  Tresham has hateful memories of his father’s country cottage where he kept a lover.  And there is more: “Jane did not know the half of it, and he was not about to enlighten her.”  (I bet he will enlighten her later!)  “I have much to live up to, you see.  But I believe I am doing my part in perpetuating the family reputation.”

Jane tries to encourage him not to be bound by the past, commenting that he has free will, as well as rank, influence, and wealth to live his own life in his own way.  He insists that that is exactly what he is doing, other than being laid up by a bullet wound.

“But perhaps it is a fitting punishment, would you not agree, for having taken my pleasure in the bed of a married woman?
She flushed and looked down.

“Does it reach your waist?” he asked.  “Or even below?

I just had to include that entire passage as-is, because wtf?  I pretty much got whiplash from that subject change.  Plus, the juxtaposition of sexual pleasure, Jane’s downward look, and then the mention of her body parts, makes this immediately sexual – which is probably the point – and also weird – which is hopefully not.  Anyway, he is OBVIOUSLY talking about her hair, the stuff on her HEAD, not the stuff she is “looking down” at “below her waist”.  Hmm.  Yeah.  Jane says it’s “only hair,” but Tresham argues that “it is only the sort of magic web in which any man would gladly become hopelessly caught and enmeshed.”  Random compliment much?  Jane is also taken aback, and primly comments that he should keep those thoughts to himself.  He orders her to go get the chessboard and as she leaves, he wonders how he came so close to baring his heart in sharing his boyhood memories, especially since he prefers to believe he is actually heartless.

More Than a Mistress, Chapter Five

The Duke's brother (Ferdinand) and sister (Angeline, aka Lady Heyward) visit again and make much fuss about themselves.  In fact, the narrative notes that Ferdinand came "more with the purpose of talking about himself than out of any great concern for his brother's recovery."  There is much talk about a bet Ferdinand has made that he can win a curricle race (a curricle turns out to be a two-wheeled, horse-drawn carriage) against Lord Berriweather.  Angeline performs her usual histrionics about her nerves.  The Duke realizes he won't be able to go watch the race because of his leg wound.

The Duke insists that Jane attend him in the parlour as he receives guests, an order that clearly upsets her.  When a group of his friends arrive, she tries to excuse herself, looking "almost frightened.  Did she expect that he and his friends were going to indulge in a collective orgy with her?"  Out of stubbornness, he makes her stay and so she gets to eavesdrop on some locker room talk between the Duke and his buddies.  She misses, however, the part where his friends joke about how Tresham must be sleeping with her.  He not only shuts down this line of thought immediately, but notices that he feels quite annoyed by his friends' joking accusations.  "Jocelyn did wonder fleetingly why he cared."

+++++++++

It was at this point in the book that I had a revelation about myself.  The following has nothing whatever to do with this novel or romance in general, and everything to do with my own distaste for said romance, whether on the page or the screen.  In my experience, there is some mystery about love.  I can't explain why I love my husband, at least not in a way that demonstrates my ironclad conviction that I will be with him for the rest of my life.  There's nothing really special or different about him to distinguish him from any other perfectly decent man out there.  I certainly can't begin to explain why he loves me.  Love is ineffable, you know?  But when I am reading a book about romance, or watching a romantic movie, the writers have to make me believe that the two characters are falling in love, and in doing so they have to provide some explanation for it.  I can't actually put myself in the characters' heads and go on that journey with them.  It's easier in movies, where you have chemistry and reaction shots and can express a whole lot with no actual dialogue.  In books, you have to describe how he looked, and how she looked, and how they looked at each other, and the fascinating physiological responses that happened because of those looks (heart pounding, palms sweating, face blushing, etc.).  Which is just scintillating as hell to read, right?  Anyway, I realized that I constantly raise one complaint about romance books/movies, which is: What on Earth made these two characters fall in love?  It pisses me off when there isn't any lead-up to the love, for example when filmmakers give in to that HORRIBLE trope about a couple who argues and fights and trades quips and just generally can't stand each other and then SUDDENLY THEY ARE IN LOVE AND THE VIOLINS ARE SWOOPING.  Also when an author shows no evidence of characters actually loving and valuing each other, but just tells the reader that they have a Great Love and expects us to believe it.  I'm not saying Mary Balogh does either of these things, just saying I realized that this is why I actively seek out NOT to read/watch romance media: it's really easy to do this stuff wrong, and it really pisses me off when that happens.  End self-revelation.

+++++++++

Through the gossip of Tresham and his friends, we get to learn more about the "Cornish scandal" that seems to have some connection to our heroine Jane.  The rumour is that Jardine - son of the Earl of Durbury, the guy who is in town trying to find the "green girl" who harmed his son - is now dead, having never regained consciousness after the attack.  Tresham points out that it must have been hard for Jardine to describe his attacker if he remained unconscious.  He notices that Jane is quite pale, and attributes this to their graphic descriptions of Jardine's brains falling out of his head, while we readers suspect there is a more personal reason for her discomfort with the topic.  However, the gossip continues, with various theories being discussed: Jardine is not dead, but ashamed to show his face after being beaten up by a girl; the girl had a pistol; the girl was trying to rob him.

Later, the Duke shouts at Jane and insists that she remove her cap.  He finds it dull, ugly, and offensive.  At this point, we know she is wearing the cap despite his wishes as she wants to remain anonymous and her "golden tresses" are her most identifiable feature.  But Tresham is determined to cut the thing to ribbons, which brings Jane to tears.  He misinterprets her emotions once again: "This is not about the cap at all, is it?  It is because I forced you to remain in the room with a horde of male visitors."  Jane agrees, and she is dismissed to her room, but not before he reminds her that the cap is forbidden while in his service.  Jane runs to her room and throws herself across her bed, so that she can fully digest the shocking news: "Sidney Jardine had died and there was no way anyone on this earth was going to believe that she had not murdered him."  Oh, so she didn't murder him?  "He had been despicable and she had hated him more than she had thought it possible to hate anyone.  But she had not wanted him dead.  Or even hurt."  Hmm, so she knew him, but she didn't kill him.  "It had been a pure reflex action to grab that heavy book and the pure, mindless instinct of self-defense to whack him over the head with it."  Um ... so I think maybe you did kill him then ... if in fact he is dead, which isn't confirmed by anything but rumour. 

Jane's remembrance of the events continues: Sidney touched his bloodied head, laughed, called her a vixen, and continued to "advance on her".  As she moved to avoid his grasp, he lost his balance and fell forward onto the marble hearth, cracking his forehead.  Though there had been witnesses to the scene, none could be relied upon to tell the truth and stand up for her; instead, they would doubtless testify that she had been caught stealing.  And, we learn, "the gold, jewel-studded bracelet ... was still at the bottom of her bag."  So she did steal a bracelet, for whatever reason.  Though Jane took Sidney's pulse to determine that he was still alive - though unconscious - his friends made such threatening comments that she decided to flee during the night, because - "oh, there were a number of reasons."

More exposition (much appreciated at this point) reveals that the Earl of Durbury was her (late) father's cousin.  Both he and the Countess dislike Jane, and furthermore they were away at the time of the incident. Her "neighbour, friend, and beau," Charles Fortescue was also away.  Feeling abandoned and alone, Jane rushes to London to see her godmother, Lady Webb.  But Lady Webb was away from home and not expected back any time soon.

This all happened three weeks ago, during which time Jane has tried to fit in, find employment, and remain undetected.  Which, of course, just makes her look all the more guilty.  Though we now know that Jane did steal jewels and money, and did issue a violent blow to a man who is now either in a coma or dead, we remain sympathetic to her because she didn't mean to kill Jardine.  There is more to learn about the circumstances surrounding this incident, but I'm relieved to have some part of this plot revealed.  It's strange to me that Jane's only recourse as a semi-innocent ('it was self-defense') woman is to leave her home in the dead of night.  But then again, I've never seen an episode of "Law and Order: Regency England" so I'm not sure how the system worked at that time.  Gossip and rumour and unreliable witnesses were likely the order of the day.

Jane reflects on the fact that she doesn't really know the truth of Jardine's situation: he may still be only unconscious, or perhaps he is recovering nicely ... or perhaps he truly was dead.  She decides to wait until she is able to learn the truth, before deciding what to do next.

More Than a Mistress – Chapter Four

This is my favourite chapter so far and might actually be the chapter where I started liking this book.  It’s a slow, fairly non-eventful chapter, but there is some nice character development and good foundation laid for the coming romance (no pun intended, I swear).

So, where Chapter Three featured a visit from Tresham’s sister, Lady Heyward, Chapter Four features a visit from his brother, Lord Dudley.  Dudley is just as self-important as Lady Heyward – Tresham, in comparison, is starting to seem like a half-decent guy, especially as he seems to view his siblings as the boors they are.

Jane Ingleby continues to be an enigma wrapped in a riddle.  She carries and comports herself like a proper lady, and this attitude somehow startles people into responding to her as such, even when they are told she is a servant.  For example, Tresham presents his brother Dudley to her – “this must surely be the first time he had been presented to a servant” – and Miss Ingleby, rather than curtsying as might be proper for a servant, “inclined her head graciously”, which inspires Dudley to make “an awkward little bow”.  This is not the way servants are generally treated, but then, as Tresham himself is starting to suspect, Jane is no servant.  Indeed, when Dudley makes a vulgar statement, Tresham cuts him off and is about to insist that “there is a lady present” before remembering that servants don’t actually count as ladies.

Tresham and Jane have a nice civil conversation about how they shall pass the time together; cards, chess, reading, gambling?  Again, one would not expect a servant to know how to read, but Tresham is onto her ruse and makes a knowing comment about the superiority of the orphanage she attended.  Then it’s time for some lusting.  Jane comments that Tresham will certainly soon become bored with the entertainments she can offer, but Tresham gets a “wolfish” look about him and comments only, “We shall see,” before ordering her to remove her cap.  When she refuses, he asks her a little more softly.  This time she concedes.  Is this to be the pattern of their interactions – she will do as he asks, if he asks nicely?  And teach him a valuable lesson about being kind to people?  Perhaps so.  After Tresham reflects on the incredible beauty of her golden tresses, he asks if she was hiding her hair because of his reputation.  She is unaware of his reputation, so he shares it with her, which is weird if he was worried about her being afraid of it.  He makes sure she is well aware that he has been accused on multiple occasions of sleeping with married women, but promises that he doesn’t seduce unwilling women, or servants for that matter.  “But I would give a monkey,” he says softly, “to see you with your hair down.”  A monkey?  Is this some kind of Regency-era currency?  I wear my hair down every day, no one has ever given me wildlife in return.

That evening, Jane reads from “Gulliver’s Travels” while Tresham reflects how boring his evenings are going to be while his leg recovers.  Usually he’s into the theatre or opera and then getting laid, “the most energetic exercise of all”.  He ponders Jane’s swanlike neck and her cultured reading voice, and longs again to see all her hair undone.  Just about the time I was starting to wonder if Tresham had a hair fetish, he also thinks how he might like to see her naked, too.  (Maybe that would be worth a monkey AND a giraffe!) 

The next day, the physician visits and praises Jane for her excellent job of changing Tresham’s bandage.  Then Tresham tells the doctor he wants to exercise his leg, and curses at the man when he advises against it.  Jane, naturally, has to get in the middle of this, insisting that Tresham owes the doctor an apology.  “He is merely giving you his professional opinion, for which you summoned him and are paying him.  There was no call for such rudeness.”  The doctor, of course, is flustered by this and makes excuses for the Duke, but Jane cannot let it go, advising Tresham that pain is no excuse for speaking abusively.  She feels embarrassed about her outburst, reflecting that “it came of having grown up in an enlightened home, in which servants had invariably been treated as if they were people and in which courtesy to others had been an ingrained virtue.”  Though she again resolves to curb her tongue, just moments later when Tresham orders her to fetch a cushion, she retorts, “You might say please once in a while.” 

This leads to an interesting dialogue between the two of them, with Jane encouraging the Duke to use his manners and also his words: “If I feel any indignation on any subject, I have the vocabulary with which to express it.  I do not need to resort to violence.”  But Jane’s inner monologue tells us that this is “as massive a lie as any she had ever told.”  This hearkens back to her Mysterious Past and the murder she is accused of.  Hopefully the next chapter will bring us more clues because I am getting impatient!

Tresham thanks Jane for bringing the cushion, which surprises her greatly.  He gets all sexy again, pointing out that he is superior in his ability to “amuse and delight women”.  Suddenly, Jane notices that he is a man: “Her awareness of his masculinity had been a largely academic thing until he spoke those words … But suddenly … she felt a totally unfamiliar rush of pure physical desire that did alarming things to her breasts and her lower abdomen and inner thighs.”  What were these alarming things, I wonder, and why were they alarming?  Desire is meant to be pleasant, not alarming.  But perhaps it is merely alarming because it is so unfamiliar.  In any case, Tresham and Jane are progressing quite nicely, as both have now started secretly lusting after one another.  I predict that physical contact will commence in no more than three chapters.  I kind of can’t wait.

Books I was Forced to Read

When you're an English major, you (pretend to) read a lot of books you wouldn't normally read but have to because it's a requirement. Somewhere in my third or fourth year, I took a contemporary Canadian literature course. I'm not sure how I passed this course, let alone achieved at least a B, because virtually all of the books sucked ass. I just found a bunch in my basement I'm going to make Laura read, for validation that I'm not just uncultured and they do actually suck.

My Paris, by Gail Scott

"My Paris is not for those who dislike grammatical experimentation. But for those who do enjoy playing with language, this memoir (billed as a novel) of six months in Paris in 1993 is a pleasure."

It is not a pleasure. Not. A. Pleasure. Here is the first paragraph. I didn't get past the first page because I was too busy gouging my eyes out. 

1. Like a heroine from Balzac. I am on a divan. Narrow. Covered with a small abstract black-and-white print. At end a rice-paper screen. Three mahogany-framed partitions. Pale eggshell walls curving gracefully at corners. Staring up at slender almost ceiling-high radiators. A library with four crescent shelves. Low comfortable black-and-white canape. Low end tables. Glass posed on metal. Grey round dining table and matching chairs on heavy chrome legs. Teak desk with computer. Teak console with television. Video. Fax. Green and yellow rugs on hardwood floors. One with a designer's initials in the corn.

I was a Professional Writing minor. I learned how to edit people's sentence fragments. Then I was required to read this, which government tax dollars helped to publish.

Ana Historic, by Daphne Marlatt

"Ana Historic is written in a stream of consciousness narrative mode, which uses a flow of language that resembles thought, and often a lack of punctuation, to represent an interior thought process or point of view."

Again, I did not get past the first page because I was in the emergency room receiving treatment for my bleeding, injured eyes. Except apparently this makes me uncultured, because this novel is Canadian literary canon, and especially queer literary canon.

Who's There? she was whispering. knock knock. in the dark. only it wasn't dark had woken her to her solitude, conscious alone in the night of his snoring more like snuffling dreaming elsewhere, burrowed into it, under the covers against her in animal sleep. he was dreaming without her in some place she had no access to and she was awake. now she would have to move, shift, legs aware of themselves and wanting out. a truck gearing down somewhere. the sound of a train, in some yard where men already up were working signals, levers, lamps. she turned the clock so she could see its blue digital light like some invented mineral glowing, radium 4:23. it was the sound of her own voice had woken her, heard like an echo asking,
         who's there?

I prefer the books I read to be accessible and engaging. I would rather read Fifty Shades a thousand times over than attempt to complete reading either of these novels. If that makes me uncultured and gauche... well...

Autobiography of Red, by Anne Carson

"The award-winning poet Anne Carson reinvents a genre in Autobiography of Red, a stunning work that is both a novel and a poem, both an unconventional re-creation of an ancient Greek myth and a wholly original coming-of-age story set in the present."

He came after Homer and before Gertrude Stein, a difficult interval for a poet. Born about 650 B.C on the north coast of Sicily in a city called Himera, he lived among refugees who spoke a mixed dialect of Chalcidian and Doric. A refugee population is hungry for language and aware that anything can happen. Words bounce. Words, if you let them, will do what they want to do and what they have to do. Stesichoros' words were collected in twenty-six books of which there remain to us a dozen or so titles and several collections of fragments. Not much is known about his working life (except the famous story that he was struck blind by Helen; see Appendixes A, B, and C).

I made it further in this book. Except most of it's in verse, and I'm not a huge fan of poetry in general, so I have no clue what this book is about either.

Restlessness, by Aritha Van Herk

Restlessness is about a paid assassin an international courier who hires another paid assassin to kill her rather than commit suicide. It's a fascinating exploration of depression and loneliness. And this summary is not in quotations because I wrote it myself, because I actually read this novel and enjoyed it. The only thing I had to look up was the narrator's occupation, which I remembered incorrectly. My copy of this book is riddled by notes in all different colors, which I find visually pleasing. I read this book when I was 20 or 21. I was depressed at the time, but have since gone through several cycles and different types of depression, as well as counselling, and have otherwise got 10 (okay, 12) more years of experience under my belt and may actually read it again. I also wish I still had the essay I'm sure I wrote about it (judging by all the margin notes) so I could more accurately compare my thoughts on depression between then and now.

I am alone in a room with the man who has agreed to kill me.
      Such an ordinary room, without a hint of gothic foreboding or sinister intent, the walls papered with some elegant stripe, the curtains hanging a polite two inches above the floor, which is decorously warmed with good quality Berber. Two armchairs hold wide their elbows in front of the window, a bed, substantial and bolstered and duvetted, metaphor for comfort and the sleep that is supposed to knit up raveled sleeves, rafts the center of the room.

That first sentence alone is enough to suck you in. The description of the room is pretty evocative, except the last sentence could really use some help a red Sharpie.

If I remember correctly, this course also included some plays and several books of poetry. I read the plays, not so much the poetry. One of the books of poetry was written by the instructor of the course, which seemed like a great way to force people to actually buy your really boring poetry. I think this course was probably English 455: Contemporary Canadian Fiction and Poetry, or something close to that as it's the closest one on the list on the English department website currently. It has been rebranded  Canadian Literature in Transnational Times and sounds infinitely more interesting.

The Ecstasy of Rita Joe is about a First Nations woman who moves to the Downtown Eastside and eventually dies. It would have been really interesting to study this after actually having spent time working in the Downtown Eastside, and then post-Robert Willie Pickton.

The Rez Sisters I read, but don't actually remember. Billy Bishop Goes to War was fun cuz I like me some history, and it's a one-man play.

Boringass books with bad grammar aside, if I hadn't majored in English, I don't think I would have come as easily to the realization that - for reals, dude - it's not just white people who make contributions to art, culture, and society. For serious. I grew up in a blue collar home in a really, really white town. The high school books read were, as far as I remember, all about white people. Except Hiroshima and Obasan, so Japanese people existed and made contributions, but they were limited to topics related to WWII. Otherwise it was just white people.

More Than A Mistress: Chapter Three

 As Jane watches the Duke at his desk, she notes that all his servants are afraid of him, and that his

“ habitual expression appeared to be both harsh and cynical.  And arrogant.”

"Three!  The THREE expressions of his face are harshness, cynicism, arrogance, and hotness.  FOUR ..."

Jane has decided to be “a quiet, meek nurse who was lucky to have this position.”  In the very next sentence, however, she reflects that “it was difficult not to be herself – as she had discovered at great cost almost a month ago.”  Not only does Balogh set her heroine up for failure at being meek and quiet, but we also get another clue about Jane’s [if that IS her real name] mysterious past.  Namely, that her past was almost a month ago.

It turns out Jane has already failed (told ya) in her mission to be meek and quiet – remember, the last chapter ended when she told the Duke to call her Miss Ingleby, and then prompted him to follow doctor’s orders and get to bed.  Seven paragraphs into this new chapter, the Duke responds to this request.  That was confusing because I'd totally forgotten about the earlier suggestion, and after all this description and reflection suddenly the Duke says, "I beg your pardon?" and I thought he might be hallucinating.  But no, he's just turning down her suggestion of going to bed, because of course “men really [are] foolish.  She had known several just like him – men whose determination to be men had made them reckless of their health and safety."  You know what's even better than misogyny?  Man-hating.  Men are all dumb, foolish, hapless creatures who need women to take care of them or else they'd just bumble around bumping into the walls all day.  Yay women!  (The equivalent term to misogyny is misandry, but nobody knows that word because it doesn't get the media attention that misogyny does.)

Tresham explains to Jane that “it is a long time since anyone spoke to me as if I were a naughty schoolboy in need of a scolding.”  This underscores the "men are dumb" theme and also, perhaps serves as some hot kinky foreshadowing.  Jane is fed up by his lecture.  However, she notes that his raw masculinity (dumbness, I guess?) must make him “impossibly attractive to any woman who liked to be bullied, dominated, or verbally abused.  And there [are] many such women.”  Oh, are there?  Really?  Because I don't know any.  But if you say they must exist - in droves - then who am I to argue?  Anyway, Jane notes that she has had quite enough of such men – but we all know she’s going to be jumping Jocelyn’s bones in a few chapters, so maybe she actually secretly likes men who bully, dominate, or verbally abuse her.  Yay, misandry to misogyny in only a few paragraphs!

Jocelyn (yes, he is totally referred to by this term on page 31) is starting to suspect what I already suspected about Jane: “She was no serving girl.  Nor brought up to spend her days in a milliner’s workshop.  She spoke with the cultured accents of a lady.  A lady who had fallen upon hard times?”  He also reflects that he has no idea why he has hired her and also no clue why he has not subsequently fired her.  This is how sexual attraction works in romance novels: it makes you do things that you have absolutely no explanation for, things that make no logical sense, and you are completely baffled as to why.  That’s not sexual attraction, that’s a personality disorder.  Then he rationalizes that he does need mental stimulation during his convalescence, and that she might be smart and interesting enough to provide good company.  He shows how much he values this companionship by continuing to speak to her irritably and sarcastically, and reflecting that he wishes she would keep her mouth shut. Maybe he's an introvert, and prefers silent companionship.  

Tresham asks a few questions about Jane’s upbringing.  She lies to him (brought up in an orphanage) but the narrative tells the reader that she had a loving mother and father who brought her up with every one of life’s comforts until she was sixteen.  Shortly after, they both died, though not before Jane got a chance to take care of her ailing father for a while, which is why she’s so comfortable being the Duke’s nurse now. 

After Jane fetches a stool to elevate his foot, and changes the bandages, a new character bursts onto the scene!  She is the third female character in the book so far, she talks WAY more than Jane, and it turns out she is the Duke’s sister.  She calls him “Tresham” which I guess Val will have to explain – doesn’t ‘Tresham’ refer to the place he is a Duke of?  Why would his sister call him that instead of Jocelyn? – and after alluding vaguely to some “business in Cornwall” that Jane is super interested in for some reason, she leaves. 

End Chapter!

Stop telling me what not to read

EL James is a fucking genius. Don't like her writing? Don't read it. But give her the credit for producing a vastly popular money making product and turning self-published fanfic that would otherwise sit in obscurity in some corner of the interwebs, next to Buffy sequels and Sulu/Kirk slashfic. They're in the early stages of planning a film that will probably also make a lot of money. She took Twilight and produced something for the early Twilight fans who grew up. Genius!

Fifty Shades is criticized for being nothing more than a romance novel with slightly kinkier sex. Guess what? Romantic fiction is a billion-dollar industry. It outsells every other category.

People don't like the characters. Ana is naive and Christian is abusive. Blah blah blah. Sometimes, in books, there are characters we don't like. Somewhere in junior high I learned the basic rules of writing fiction. The characters need to develop and change. These characters do. The kinky sex? Actually manages to advance character development (most of the time) and drive the plot forward (more on plot later). It actually takes a pretty decent writer to use a sex scene to advance plot and character, and James does it multiple times.

What I actually think is happening when certain critics put down the books and the characters is some pretty judgmental bullying tactics. Yes, bullying. I've read some rather virulent anti-Fifty Shades reviews. They claims the books are misogynistic and anti-feminist. They usually rail on and on about Ana and how she's a terrible example of a woman in an abusive, co-dependent relationship. Mostly they complain that she is naive and stupid. Here's what's wrong with that:

Ana is 21. The books are written in the first person present tense. We are reading them from the point of view if a chick in her early 20s who was an English major who focused on classic British lit. Guess what! I was an English major. At 21, I was pretty fucking naive. It was a different kind of naive than Ana, but still pretty naive. I knew Anas. I still know some. I know some who are older than me now. They don't deserve hatred and derision for their naïveté. Usually they're quite content in their naïveté. And there's nothing wrong with that. My favourite really stupid Ana mistake? I probably would have made the same mistake at her age. Brand new on the job, she sends a bunch of deeply personal emails to her boyfriend on her work email. That's just dumb. You don't do that. She is warned not to and she keeps doing it. Then she gets caught. Duh.

Look, I was bullied in school. Girl bullying. What was I made fun of for? Lots of things, but my choice in books, movies and music were targets. So I am the last person to rail against someone for her choice in reading material, or rail against a character for her life choices. Tease? Sure. I will tease Dr. Who fan geeks because ther enthusiasm is cute and endearing. I've tried Dr. Who. I don't like it. I don't really "get" it. But I don't dismiss the entire scifi genre because I don't like it. I also don't like (most) fantasy. That's also securely in the realm of geeks and nerds and their ilk. All those imaginary creatures and invented languages and an entire mythology... that's a lot of creativity and passion there. I just don't like it. I don't dismiss fantasy fans as unrealistic heathens unable to connect with the real world, or some crap like that. So why is it okay to dismiss romance fans, and thus fans of Fifty Shades, as weak, misogynistic anti-feminists because their version of a fantasy escape is different from someone else's? This has happened my entire life. Hell, my mother dismissed my enjoyment of Little House on the Prairie as a child because it depicted, apparently, unrealistic idealized family life and would give me unrealistic expectations of my future spouse. That's fucked up thinking, and I knew it was fucked up thinking at the time. Guess what? I still love Little House, and I've long since given up on my husband ever being as handy as Charles Ingalls. I still love him, too.

I'm sick of being told what I should and shouldn't read/watch/listen to. It's one of my insecurities now, telling people what sort of entertainment I should enjoy. Because you can say "I like scifi" or "I like comic books" and no one bats an eye. Try telling a group of your peers you like romance novels. Go ahead. So you can tell me not to read Fifty Shades because it alters and lowers God's standards of marriage and sex (and 49 other reasons Christian women shouldn't read it, my favorite being #8). Or I shouldn't read it because "It’s dangerous because it tells women, possibly young, innocent women who are just like Ana, that it’s okay for a man to treat you like garbage." I shouldn't read it because it's considered nothing more than "mommy porn" (how fucking patronizing is that?) and it sets feminism back decades. Half the time it's the audience - "housewives and mommies" - being attacked, not the content. Seriously?

What's wrong with the book? Plenty! Horribly repetitive phrasing and vocabulary. I don't care about all the "oh mys" and "holy craps" and "whoas". That's the character's internal dialogue and that's her voice. I did get sick of Fifty, hair ties, subconscious and inner goddess. The sex got old by the third book and I skipped most of the scenes.

And the plot! The first book was my favourite partly because it had the most realistic plot. The story was character driven and the conflict was internal. In the second book, there was a lot of internal conflict, but the climax involved an external force. That external force still drove character development, though, so it was bearable. The third book? The plot was contrived, boring, predictable, and really, really old. The villain was one-note and predictable. The ending was predictable.

There are tons of red Sharpie moments you can attribute to a bad (or lazy) editor. EL James is British. There are a whole bunch of Britishisms spattered through the book that any decent editor could have easily changed, a well as a basic error of geography (you don't go to Seattle from Vancouver WA by first going through Portland!).  And let's talk about a basic error of human anatomy repeated by many MANY romance novelists, or really any author depicting a girl's cherry getting popped. Your hymen is located at the entrance of your vagina, not deep inside. The level of pain a girl can feel on its breakage can depend on a great many things, like whether or not she's used tampons, ridden a bike, or ridden a horse. I'm pretty sure I broke mine falling on the seat of my bike in grade 6.

Then there was just some inappropriate grossness that didn't belong, like suggesting a fetus liked sex already because it moved during intercourse (it moved because its safe little nest was jostled, and because an orgasm is basically a contraction). I was also disturbed by a scene at the end involving a small child eating a Popsicle, when it had previously been used as a sexual safe word and, prior to that, referenced as a euphemism for a penis during oral sex. Another red Sharpie moment - my iPhone autocorrect knows that Popsicle is a brand name and should thus be capitalized, but apparently neither EL James nor her editor were aware of that. They need only refer to the fine print at the bottom of the Popsicle website: "POPSICLE® is a registered trademark of Unilever and is NOT a name for just any frozen pop on a stick"!

So dislike Fifty Shades because you dislike the romance genre. Dislike it for bad editing, repetitive phrasing, and contrived plots. Dislike it because you prefer a different depiction of relationships. But don't dislike it because it's not the book you expected or wanted it be. Certainly don't dislike it because you have rather elitist and presumptuous opinions against the sort of people who read and enjoy it. Because really? Get over yourself. I like that. I was an English major with a pretty damn decent gpa who also took a bunch of Women's Studies and Women's History courses who wrote for the campus feminist newspaper. I. Still. Like. It.

More Than A Mistress, Chapter Two

Things are already heating up ... by the end of Chapter Two, our Bold Heroine is already trying to get Devilish Duke into bed!  I'M NOT EVEN KIDDING.

So as Devilish Duke heads off home to see his doctor about his wounded leg, perspective shifts and we get to learn the heroine's name.  It's Jane Ingleby, and Mary Balogh does some extremely skillful exposition where we learn that Jane is broke, alone, recently arrived in London, and only tenuously employed, all in the space of only one sentence.  Nice!  (I mean the exposition is nice, not the situation for our heroine.)  We also find out that Jane has been feeling paralyzing fear for "other reasons" not relating to her money woes.  Perhaps these reasons are why she has fled to London?  Two pages later, this seems to be confirmed as Jane reflects that "perhaps even now she was being hunted."  By whom, or why, is as yet a MYSTERY.

Could Jane be a higher-class woman than she is pretending to be?  Apparently she is trying "to disappear into the relatively anonymous world of the working class."  She also reflects how "women of the lower classes [are] so utterly powerless, so totally without any right to respect".  If she is actually a Lady of good standing, it would explain why she is so bold and arrogant and has this compulsive habit of standing up for herself.  We'll have to wait and see.

Jane loses her dismal job at the millinery, which she has held for two days, because she is late for work.  There's a bit where Jane's now-former boss is actually an interesting character, which is a nice surprise since we'll likely never see her again.  That's two points for good writing, Mary Balogh!  (And Val cheers quietly and grins widely and thinks I'll get hooked on romance novels yet.)  The same milliner character also gossips a bit about the Duke, noting not only that "he is the very devil himself" but also that he's well-hung: "no padding in them breeches, I would have you know!"  (How does she know?!)

On the flimsy and likely sarcastic promise that she could keep her job at the millinery if she produces a signed note from the Duke that he was the cause of her being late to work, Jane strides (the only possible means of locomotion for a bold heroine such as Jane) towards his house.  When she arrives, oh folly!  The butler mistakes her for the doctor's assistant, and quickly ushers her in to the Duke's bedroom, where he is awaiting his surgery!  The doctor thinks she is a servant, and gives up on waiting for his assistant, instead ordering Jane to help him.  The Duke recognizes Jane but has no time or presence of mind to speak up before surgery begins and rampant pain tears through his body.  Whee!  Farce!

Post-surgery, Jocelyn allows himself only a brief moment to enjoy Jane's tender care as she mops the sweat from his brow, then demands to know what she is doing there.  She requests the note for her employer, and though Jocelyn's friend Conan (seriously, how awesome is this) supports the request, he refuses.  She then insists that he provide employment for her as she simply "refuse[s] to starve."  Jocelyn, having just been told by his doctor that he must stay in bed and off his leg for three weeks - "he could not think of a worse fate", the narrative notes - agrees to hire Jane as his nurse.

The stage is now set.  Jane feels that Duke Jocelyn is the most "arrogant, bad-tempered, ill-mannered man" she's ever met.  Jocelyn feels that Jane is "the cause of all his woes".  These characters despise each other, and now they are going to spend three weeks together.  In romance novel terms, this is a foolproof recipe for hot sex.  The fact that one of them is bed-ridden is just icing on the cake.

A few other things happen in Chapter Two.  We find out that the Earl of Durbury is in London and staying at an expensive hotel.  He has hired a Bow Street Runner (Wikipedia describes these as London's first professional police force) to find a "green country girl" who has "as good as killed [his] son".  This dangerous criminal has also "run off with a fortune in money and jewels."  The Runner (Mick Boden) wants to know more about the particularities of this woman's crime, as well as her appearance, but we don't get to find out about that yet.  I'm guessing the murderess will have "golden hair" and "eyes a man could drown in".  If it is indeed Jane the Earl is looking for, my theory of her being a noblewoman is shot, as he describes her as a green country girl.

Also, Mary Balogh made me laugh twice in this chapter.  Behold:

Passage One:
[Jocelyn has been given quantities of alcohol, which function as anesthetic so the doctor can remove the bullet in his leg.]  "'f I drink more, th'old sawbones will have m'leg off b'fore I can protest."  His lips and tongue felt as if they did not quite belong to him.  So did his brain.

Passage Two:
"Who let you in?"  Jocelyn [demanded of Jane].
"Your butler, I suppose," she said.  "I told him I had come to speak with you, and he whisked me up here.  He said I was expected.  You may wish to advise him to greater caution about the people he admits.  I might have been anyone."
"You are anyone!" Jocelyn barked.

And now, as promised, the conclusion to Chapter Two.  Jocelyn and Jane set up a few rules of engagement. Jocelyn frowns at Jane, attempting to intimidate her as he lectures her on the fact that he is the master and she is the servant (foreshadowing?) and she must show respect at all times.  Jane responds by telling him not to swear in her presence, and also instructing him to call her Miss Ingleby instead of Jane.  Jocelyn, for some reason, does not beat her senseless at this point, but asks if she has any other requests for him.  She does:

'"Why are you not in bed?'"

Fin.

More Than a (Headless) Mistress

My friend Val pretty much dared me to read this book.  We are both voracious readers, but our tastes seem pretty divergent: she prefers Regency romance while I prefer contemporary fiction or mental health memoirs. Anyway, she is so excited about her favourite author, Mary Balogh, that she insisted I read one of her books.  The only one the library had when we happened to visit was this one, "More Than a Mistress".  I am immediately disturbed by the way the pictured Mistress has no head, seeming to belie the title's insistence that she is More Than a sexual, objectified body.

So, I've managed to read a whole ten pages so far (Val's insistence that the book would take me only a few hours failed to take into account the fact that I would prefer to read almost anything other than romance novels).  I figure if I hold myself accountable by posting reviews every few days, I'll have to keep reading, right?  Anyway, the plot of the book ... well, here's a link to the synopsis, and here's the absolutely shocking summary: a DUKE hires a SERVANT GIRL to be his NURSE.  She is BOLD.  He is DEVILISH.  Though LOVE was the last thing on their minds, GUESS WHAT HAPPENS: a PASSION that drives them to RISK EVERYTHING.  Also (not pictured): EYES that one could DROWN IN.

The book opens with the arrogant Duke about to fight a duel.  Turns out, he's been accused of sleeping with another man's wife, and the man demands satisfaction.  Whether the Duke did or didn't is not yet clear, but do the math: he is arrogant and devilish, after all.  The aforementioned servant girl with drown-hazard eyes bursts onto the scene at a crucial moment and stops the duel, for no reason other than she hates dueling, I guess?  While the Duke is distracted by her shout, his opponent shoots him in the leg, which allows the absolutely awesome outburst by one of the Duke's entourage: "Shame!  For shame, Oliver!"  This immediately conjured in my mind the weird custom we used as elementary school kids to indicate shame: holding out the pointer finger of one hand and "shaving" it with the pointer finger of the other hand.  I have no idea what this is supposed to mean but it kind of looks like you are peeling a carrot.  Do children still do this?

The Duke, despite being shot, stands his ground, and then, "as he had done at every previous duel in which he had been engaged," he fired his pistol into the air instead of into his opponent.  So from this, we learn several things: One, the Duke is not only DEVILISH but also BADASS*, as he can stand perfectly still after being shot.  Also, he's been in lots of duels before.  And finally, and most puzzling, he has never actually killed his opponent in a duel (although that's kind of the point of a duel?  I think?) - but neither has he been killed.  So, I guess everyone in the area is a crappy shot?  Looks like his current opponent (For Shame Oliver) is the most able duellist so far: at least he managed to shoot someone in the leg.  He will probably end up with a new career as a shooting instructor.

*Despite the fact that is name is - no kidding - JOCELYN.  His buddy is named CONAN.  Mary Balogh likes giving her male characters awesome names!

Nothing else very interesting happens in the next few pages.  Duke Jocelyn heads home to his private doctor to have his leg attended to.  He gives the servant girl (who is as yet nameless) a coin to make up for her being late for work.  Also of note, she is described thusly: "her cheeks ... flushed with anger.  They paled at his words, and she stared at him wide-eyed, her lips compressed in a hard line."  So apparently she does have a head, despite what the book cover would have you believe.

Next time: Servant Girl gets a name!