Four Nights With the Duke(62)

"My readers will love it," the duchess said instantly. And defensively.

"I have no doubt of it," Will said, pitching his voice to a soothing  tone. "But will they accept the fact that Lord Xavier miraculously  remembers his wife's face only once he believes his evil second cousin  has murdered her? I think your readers would prefer that he at least  attempt to save her life. From good will, if not because of the family  connection."                       
       
           



       

Her Grace sighed, and pulled the manuscript pages toward her. "I suppose  you have a point. But we'll have to figure out how to keep the scene in  which he throws himself off the cliff in the throes of guilt. Chuffy  adores that plunge, and you know that Chuffy is my best critic."

Will chose his words carefully. "I am somewhat concerned that Lord Xavier would be dead before he could . . ."

And so it went.

If truth be told, the annual month during which Will Bucknell joined  their family, editing her latest manuscript and arguing with Chuffy, was  one of Her Grace's favorites in the year as well.

Though a woman who loves so dearly, and is so dearly loved in return,  can find joy in almost every moment. Certainly in every month.

And definitely during every consultation with her husband.





Romancing a Career, in 1800 and Thereafter




This novel owes a great deal to its sources, but even more to the  readers who have celebrated my work, encouraging me to write an  (astonishing to me) twenty-four novels to date. In creating a female  author of romance novels around the turn of the nineteenth century, I  wanted not only to depict how much fun it can be to plot and write  romance, but also to honor the authors of the time. For the most part,  the authors' work is no longer in print, though their novels were  enormously popular at the time. Authors like Sarah Scudgell Wilkinson  supported themselves writing adventuresome fiction such as The Fugitive  Countess (1807). Anna Maria Bennett began her long bestselling career  with Anna (1785), whose first printing sold out in one day. The novels  could be extremely lucrative: in 1796, Fanny Burney was paid 2,000  pounds for her novel Camilla, including its copyright, which would be  over 100,000 in today's pounds. That doesn't mean their work was  universally celebrated, of course. The review that plagued Mia so much  that she can recite it from memory was real; it was published in  Graham's Lady's Magazine in 1848, and the novel exhibiting "vulgar  depravity and unnatural horrors" was Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights.

I invented the publishing firm of Brandy, Bucknell & Bendal, but in  fact, the publisher of Lucibella's books would likely have been Minerva  Press. William Lane established the press in 1790 and thereafter  published a constant stream of fiction, as well as operating a  circulating library. He specialized in gothic horror-romance novels and  would have welcomed Lucibella's heroines-in-peril. While Lucibella's  prose echoes novels at the time, I took the inheritance plot of An  Angel's Form and a Devil's Heart (a real novel, written by Selina  Davenport and published by Minerva in 1818) from a Dorothy Parker short  story called "The Standard of Living."

To ensure they were accessible to the middle and working classes, novels  of this type were typically bound in cardboard with leather labels on  the spines. Jane Austen's Emma (1816), for example, first appeared with  "plain gray boards" and a title label made from stamped morocco leather.  But Chuffy's more luxurious bindings existed as well: the foremost  bookbinder at the time was Roger Payne, who re-bound volumes in Russian  leather with gold borders, embedded pearls, and even (on occasion) silk  embroidery that reflected the book's contents.

If Mia's character was inspired by late eighteenth-and early  nineteenth-century female novelists, Sir Cuthbert owes his appearance  and cheerful nature to one of Shakespeare's great characters, Sir Toby  Belch in Twelfth Night. Chuffy mischievously quotes from that play, as  Mia recognizes, but my greater hope is that he brings with him the  reckless joie de vivre of his predecessor. Talking of quotations, Mia's  much maligned poetry borrows from some of Percy Bysshe Shelley's  romantic poetry. Finally, young Master Charles Wallace possesses  something of the preternatural intelligence of Madeleine L'Engle's  namesake character in A Wrinkle in Time, though arguably Charlie owes  more to Charles Dickens's earnest and captivating disabled child, Tiny  Tim.





Seductive scoundrel Edward Reeve needs a wife: a lady whose perfect  reputation will persuade society to overlook his questionable past. The  moment he meets Lady Regina Cholmondeley-ffynche, he knows that she is  the one he wants.



But Regina would never marry a man like Ward. As the author of a wildly  popular etiquette column, she can't afford to risk society's disapproval  . . . no matter how tempting she might find the notorious charmer's  advances.



Determined to win the hand-and heart-of the spirited woman who has  bewitched him, Ward will take any risk to convince Regina they were  meant to be together.


                       
       
           



       
He promises her heaven . . .



She gives him seven minutes.



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