Keeper Shelf: Slightly Dangerous by Mary Balogh (or Pride & Prejudice with Knobs on)

I promised a review of this book, which I do truly love.

I love it for many reasons:-

1. It is the ultimate Balogh. It's got all the classic elements of a great Balogh novel including great, restrained dialogue, a beautifully matched H/H, wonderful characterisation, lovely dialogue, outdoor sex and a satisfying resolution with real character growth.

2. Even better, it is Balogh-does-Pride-and-Prejudice-with-knobs-on. It's not identical to P&P, but it does have the marked differential in status between the H/H, a stiff-necked, somewhat formal Darcy-like hero in Wulfric, a merry, sensible heroine who recognises her own worth a la Lizzy Bennet in Christine, a very bad first attempt at a marriage proposal by Wulfric, a gradual recognition by Wulfric that he loves Christine, a 'rescue' by Wulfric of Christine which helps her recognise his true value, and finally, finally, the second successful proposal. Plus bonus outdoor sex.

3. Wulfric is the all-powerful Duke of Bedwyn and if you read this series consecutively, by the time you read Slightly Dangerous, you'll have a firm grasp of his character as a lofty aristocrat with a propensity for peering at people through his quizzing glass. This book has lots of very satisfying scenes in which the heroine challenges Wulfric's chilly hauteur to great comic and emotional effect. Christine tosses his quizzing glass into a tree and he has to climb up to fetch it. She falls in the Serpentine and he has to get drenched rescuing her. She disconcerts him and needles him and humanises him. This series of scenes culminates a really lovely scene with all the Bedwyns at a lake when Wulfric abandons his dignity to perform a daring dive. His siblings are amazed to see him throwing caution to the wind and just living. It's lovely and touching.

Here's a passage from marriage proposal 1 that shows his pride to great effect:

"I did not think you indifferent to me," he said. "And contrary to popular belief, one coupling does not kill physical attraction. Your prospects of living a full life here seem slender. Life as my duchess would offer you infinitely more. Do you say no, Mrs Derrick, only to punish me? Will you perhaps punish yourself too in the process? I can offer you everything you have ever dreamed of."

The fact that she was tempted - drat her, she was tempted - fanned the flames of her anger.

"Can you?" she asked sharply. "A husband with a warm personality and human kindness and a sense of humour? Someone who loves people and children and frolicking and absurdity? Someone who is not obsessed with himself and his own consequence? Someone who is not ice to the very core? Someone with a heart? Someone to be a friend and companion and lover? This is all I have ever dreamed of, your grace. Can you offer it all to me? Or any of it? Any one thing?"............

......."Someone with a heart," he said very softly then. "No, perhaps you are right, Mrs Derrick. Perhaps I do not possess one. And, if I do not, then I lack everything of which you dream, do I not? I beg your pardon for taking your time and offending you yet again.

And this time when he turned away he kept going - beneath the trellis, down the steps, out through the garden gate, which he closed quietly and precisely behind him, and down the street, presumably to the inn, where he had probably left his carriage.

4. Let's not forget that there are two character journeys within P&P. The pride is all Darcy's. The prejudice is Lizzy's, and in this case, Christine's. Just like Lizzy Bennett, Christine takes one look at Wulfric and presumes to know exactly what he is. In both P&P and Slightly Dangerous , the heroine is impulsive and warm and the corollary of those traits is a tendency to wrongly judge a man who is not cut from the same cloth. Only through exposure to this man do they learn of his true worth. I like that Balogh makes it clear that whilst Wulfric has been somewhat humanised, he remains essentially the same, although known through and through by Christine.

"I will always be the stern, aloof, rather cold aristocrat you so despise," he said. "I have to be. I - "

"I know," she said, looking up quickly. "I would neither expect nor want you to change. I love the Duke of Bewcastle as he is. He is formidable and magnificent and dangerous. Especially when he hauls villains to their feet with one hand and dangles them above the floor and throws terror into them with a few soft words."

The familiar laughter lurked in her eyes.

"But I always be Wulfric Bedwyn too," he said. "And he has discovered that it can occasionally be fun to dive into lakes out of forbidden trees."

The laughter spread to the rest of her face.

"I love Wulfric Bedwyn," she said, and there was a wicked inflection in her voice.

If you have not read this book, you really ought to.

Skimming the keepers

There's been a lot of this (above) sort of reading recently. Legal reading. I've been mobbed at work with hearings galore and whilst that can be satisfying in its way, I'm glad to have reached the end of a particularly busy period. One more week in the office next week and then the Tumperkins are off on holiday!

I've not really had the heart for a new book over the last couple of weeks. Instead, in my spare moments, I've been reaching for the Keeper shelf (not to mention the secret drawer).

When I'm stressed and busy, I need an easy way to tap into the pleasure of romance-reading and Keepers are the ideal way to do it. I don't so much re-read them as skim them - perhaps spending about an hour on a book - re-reading the parts I love in detail and skimming the rest.

Over the last few days, I've re-visited the following:-

Strangers in the Night by Charlotte Lamb. This is a maybe 1979/1980 vintage category . I love it. It's one of those Lamb books that bucked standard romance conventions. The heroine is an actress and the hero a playwright. There's another male character with whom the heroine had an 'encounter' when she was a teenager. The way the blurb on the back is written you would think it's this character who will be the hero and that the hero is actually the current-man-in-the-heroine's-life-who-she-will-dump. Not so. Features date rape and sexual power play.

The Notorious Rake by Mary Balogh. Classic Regency category from the early 90s. It features many Balogh staples including lots of sexual healing and the almost obligatory outdoor sex scene - although in this case it comes really early - in chapter 1! Yay! Love the hero in this one. Especially the fact that as a young man he was earnest and bookish and not rakish at all. Also, his self-loathing feels real and understandable.

Equal Opportunities by Mathilde Madden, an erotic romance between a young man in a wheelchair and a woman who is turned on by men in wheelchairs. I've never reviewed it, but have mentioned it before. I can understand that some might find the central premise worrying but it's really very good and Madden deals with the heroine's kink and the hero's disability in a way that I found satisfying and real. David is better-looking than Mary and they both recognise he probably wouldn't have considered a relationship with her before he lost the use of his legs. The fact that David's disability is both the reason for the relationship and absolutely central to their sexual practices, is both disturbing and strangely empowering. There's a great scene in which David is at a party and a pretty girl treats him as a completely non-sexual person. Then Mary arrives and she's just desperate to jump his bones. For all her kink, she does see him as a person in a way that the other girl does not. Highly recommended. There's an interesting interview here in which Madden explains her thinking and research.

Another book that I skimmed with the very greatest of swooning enjoyment, just last night in fact, is my very very favourite Balogh: Slightly Dangerous, a book which is long overdue a post from me. It's omission I will rectify in my next post.

Rooooooooooooooooooobin............ the hooded man

Ages ago, CJ was complaining about the small weedy child who plays Robin Hood in the latest BBC series. So I thought I'd post a wee little video (under 2 mins!) of the 80s-tastic Robin of Sherwood series featuring the perfect profile and shiny, mulleted hair of pretty Michael Praed doing his very best Man O' The Woods - inspired RH. For those of you across the pond, this is Prince watzsisname from Dynasty.

I cannot tell you how I much I loved Michael Praed as Robin Hood. I wanted to brush his hair and stroke his perfect jawline. He was sooooo pretty. And it wasn't just Michael. It was everything. The cod paganism with Herne the Hunter. The ginger girl as Maid Marian who just screamed pre-Raphaelite. A young Ray Winstone as Will Scarlet. Nickolas Grace as the Sheriff who I loved loved loved in Brideshead. And soundtrack by Clannad!

Anyway, ignore my over-excited meanderings (and the Polish[?] over dubbing). Here it is.

Things that make me go hmmmmmmmm

Watching Blur do a great set at Glastonbury live on TV.

Find me today at ....

.... DIK

I neglected to mention....

.... that I have been blogging over at Racy Romance Reviews.

I've been doing the occasional 'musings' posts and a monthly dual review with Jessica. I really should've pimped these before now. The latest one went up this weekend, a dual review of the fabulous The Madness of Lord Ian MacKenzie by Jennifer Ashley.

There's also quite a recent musings one about sweat in romance.

Tremulations on the Ether

"Let us learn from the novel. In the novel, the characters can do nothing but live. If they keep on being good, according to pattern, or bad, according to pattern, or even volatile, according to pattern, they cease to live, and the novel falls dead. A character in a novel has got to live, or it is nothing.

We, likewise, in life have got to live, or we are nothing.

What we mean by living is, of course, just as indescribable as what we mean by being. Men get ideas into their heads, of what they mean by Life, and they proceed to cut life out to pattern. Sometimes they go into the desert to seek God, sometimes they go into the desert to seek cash, sometimes it is wine, woman, and song, and again it is water, political reform, and votes. You never know what it will be next: from killing your neighbour with hideous bombs and gas that tears the lungs, to supporting a Foundlings Home and preaching infinite Love, and being correspondent in a divorce.

In all this wild welter, we need some sort of guide. It's no good inventing Thou Shalt Nots! What then?

Turn truly, honourably to the novel, and see wherein you are man alive, and wherein you are dead man in life. You may love a woman as man alive, and you may be making love to a woman as sheer dead man in life. You may eat your dinner as man alive, or as a mere masticating corpse. As man alive you may have a shot at your enemy. But as a ghastly simulacrum of life you may be firing bombs into men who are neither your enemies nor your friends, but just things you are dead to. Which is criminal, when the things happen to be alive.

To be alive, to be man alive, to be whole man alive: that is the point. And at its best, the novel, and the novel supremely, can help you. It can help you not to be dead man in life. So much of a man walks about dead and a carcass in the street and house, today: so much of women is merely dead. Like a pianoforte with half the notes mute.

But in the novel you can see, plainly, when the man goes dead, the woman goes inert. You can develop an instinct for life, if you will, instead of a theory of right and wrong, good and bad. "

from Why The Novel Matters by D H Lawrence

I love this essay, and read it regularly. You can read the whole thing here. It is a permanent fixture on my sidebar.