Smart Bitches Trashy Books | All of the romance, none of the bullshit.

Melicent ruminates upon her crush, which, since this is a historical is called a tendre, which I pronounce with as much nasal pretension as the name of that chick on 90210, Original Recipe, who was played by an actress in her 30’s. You know, Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhnnnndrea. So: taaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhndre is now the word of the moment in my brain.

...for although she had conceived a schoolgirl tendre for her husband on sight, she had never felt this immodest, wanton and reckless lust for him. He caught her eye. His firm lips curved into a smile that promised to fulfill every one of those wanton thoughts.

Whoa! So in chapter 1 she was cold, indifferent to his sexual attentions, and shy. Now she’s a twitching sexpot in an out of date ballgown, squirming over her mutton. Woo damn! Behold the power of writing!

Oh,but Melicent’s trip down the lustful corridor of memory lane has hit a cold moment:

She was no longer the starry-eyed innocent he had married four years before. She had worshipped him when first they were wed, and his cold preference for spending time on the Beaumont estates rather than on her had broken her heart.

On the estates rather than on her? No wonder she turned to erotic writing.

But given the heated glances they’re sharing, they’ll be on each other like a four year old political sticker on a hot car bumper, and sex will smooth the way to repairing their differences. Mark my words.

Wait, was I not supposed to reveal the ending? Oh. Sorry. Maybe it’ll end unhappily! Who knows?!

But soft! What misunderstanding through yonder plotline breaks? It is a conversation with double meaning, and she does not understand the “stimulating writing” to which he refers. Suddenly he’s kissing her ferociously, thinking she’s using an elderly neighbor for help with her writing, and she’s thinking he’s all hot and bothered by architectural manuals. Whoa!

she opened the door of her bedchamber and he kicked it shut behind them. Only then did he let her go, spinning her around, ripping the buttons from her bodice and the neck of her chemise with it.

Does that qualify as bodice ripping? Because if so, HA!

But soft again! What twist on standard operating cliche breaks upon this tender story? The honesty of her response, the heights of erotic fulfillment, the multiple - and I do mean multiple- orgasms, they point to an honesty of character, and he couldn’t believe that she’d possibly been unfaithful.

She was simply a very candid and giving person.

Of course. Who has very candid and giving orgasms, possibly in the double digits by the time the tally is done. But of course, sex clears away the interference that blocks communication, and instead of making things more complicated, makes them clearer and easier to resolve. Hell, given the heights of passion and the depths of the plunging thrusts, I can believe they’d clear the air to get a little more of that action. Lord Alex WALON is quite the accomplished bed partner. Lucky Melicent.

Melicent is intimidated by her husband, his polish and style contrasting with her cold cottage, histrionic mother, and embarrassed financial straits. Although why she’s in such financial straits I’m not sure I get. She nurses a crush on her husband (awwwww, I love that) and a bucket of hurt feelings over his indifference and callous dismissal of her, but a sense of relief that within moments, he’s kissed her cheek, looked at her with an interest thick with intentions, and tossed her drunk brother, the feckless Aloysius, into a fountain.

“One way and another, Alex’s arrival in their household had set the cat amongst the pigeons.”

There’s going to be eating? In a Harlequin Morsel of Historical Romance? WORD UP.

So where was Melicent’s monthly allowance? Why was she managing a drunken feckless Aloysius, and a hypochondriac tyrant mother? And why was Melicent leaving Lord Alex WALON alone in her sitting room, the manuscript pages of her latest fiesty novel available for his prurient eyes?

Because it makes for some hot reading, yo. Word up to Lady Melicent.

Of course, the lust is coded as love within the text, despite his indifference to her earlier and his anger at her after that:

“Melicent stood in the doorway, dressed in an unfashionable evening gown. He found that he wanted to rip it off her and make love to her on the carpet.”

Was it “make love,” or fuck her silly? There’s a difference, but when you’re reading a Harlequin Morsel, the emotional connection must immediately be entwined with the sexual attraction. I mean, we’re working with a limited timeline here.

That said, Alex is so taken with his lustful thoughts, the new prose he’s stumbled across in her desk, and her lush pink lips that he kisses her with passion because he can’t help himself.

They broke apart as the dinner gong sounded. Melicent was panting, her hair ruffled, lips soft and damp, eyes wide and dark with desire. Alex felt another spear of lust go through him.

OW!

And with that violent thought, here endeth chapter two. Chapter three: they head into the dining room to eat mutton. HOT HOT HOT!

Cue trip for Lord Alex WALON Beaumont UP to the WILD COLD WILDS of WILD YORKSHIRE!

*traveling music here*

Ah! In the course of ruminating on how very very angry Lord Alex WALON Beaumont is, we learn that he was forced into marriage to Lady Melicent by his father, Duke of Beaumont. Same surname as title - how Windsorian! But wouldn’t he have a courtesy title, and not his own surname? Unless he’s not the heir.

Ok, time to stop nit picking. Dammit Kalen Hughes, all that historical instruction is rubbing in. Damn You!

Oh ho! I am right! Lord Alex WALON Beaumont is a younger son, and his father pushed him into marriage by threatening to remove his rights to run the estates if he didn’t marry because his older brother, Henry, has a “preference for men” and wouldn’t ever marry. Yeah. Because being gay precludes him from running the estate? And there were no beard wives in the Regency? Paging Phyllida, Brotherhood of Philander, Party of three...Lady Phyllida, your table is ready.

So their marriage is unsatisfactory to Lord Alex WALON Beaumont, and he didn’t like it. Rage, he has it.

But he’s noble because he loves the land and the people on it and is the only one in the family who does. I suppose it’s a mark of the brevity of the format that the characters, even ones not formally introduced, are cast in such black and white terms. And he’s pissed off even more at the thought that someone - not him - introduced his wife to the ways of the fleshy flesh sword, because judging from the three lines he read, she’s got an intimate knowledge of the intimacy that couldn’t have emerged from their cold, lifeless coupling.

The plot! It thickens!

Melicent, it seems, is also a creature of innate nobility and dedication to family. She’d gone to Yorkshire to care for her mother after her father’s death, because, AND I QUOTE, “Melicent’s feckless young brother Aloysius was running wild.”

Oh noes! Feckless Aloysius is running wild! Raise the portcullis!

And Lord Alex WALON Beaumont is peeved because Melicent defied his wishes and left for for Yorkshire. Girlfriend stood up for herself, left his house, and now writes ferociously erotic fiction that thinly hides the true identity of its participants. Somehow, Lady Melicent has an impossibly accurate source of gossip that transmits the news from town to her frozen abode in Yorkshire, where she writes up the humpity hump hump humpity hump hump (Look at Frosty Go!) and sends it to be printed with such haste that the gossip in print is read by those who shouldn’t know of it, and lives… are changed… for… ever. Holy shit. She’s a blogger.

Behold Lord Alex WALON Beaumont, who now plans to “go to Yorkshire and seduce his errant wife according to the style laid down by Lady Loveless. He would expose her for the wanton she must surely be.”

And therein lies the end of chapter 1. Aside from that last part where he jumps to a bit of a conclusion and decides to go seduce his wife because she knows all about sex, based on the evidence presented by a bunch of uncomfortable men in a club who are mad that this writer has exposed them for the profligate sluts there are, these are some of my very favorite plot constructions:

1. Heroine with hidden talents, especially one who can skewer those what need skewering, and also one who hides those talents behind shyness, so that she is often underestimated.
2. Hero who must reevaluate his impressions of his wife.
3. Having the hero and heroine fall for one another already within the boundaries of marriage. I’m sort of a sucker for the ‘I thought I knew you but WHOA’ plotline - this may be a byproduct of my love for the first romance I ever read, Midsummer Magic.

So even though I’m picking the nits like damn and whoa, I’m having a good old time over here.