TEST
(originally reviewed on November 11, 1999)
I have read all of Jane Feather’s books from the ’90s and some from the ’80s. This book is her finest because she goes into her material with a depth and complexity her other books lack. While all of her books are entertaining, this one is not only entertaining, it’s thought-provoking.
Tarquin is a handsome and sexy duke. He is also a very controlling and manipulative personality. He oversees his family and the various titles and estates they all hold. Thus, when his cousin, a homosexual Viscount, shows up riddled with last-stage syphilis and no heir, Tarquin sees a valuable title and estate slipping out of his grasp. His solution is to marry his cousin off, not let him consummate the marriage (a dubious proposition anyway) and to make the wife his mistress. Tarquin will get her pregnant and pass off the child as his cousin’s. This child will thus inherit the title and estate and all will stay within Tarquin’s family and control.
Tarquin hastens to a high-class London brothel and offers the owners a huge sum to come up with a well-bred virgin for him to use in his scheme. They come up with our heroine, Juliana. She’s on the lam after being accused of murdering her husband by hitting him with a bed warmer when he was trying, in vain, to perform his husbandly duties on their wedding night. Juliana is charmingly clumsy and that is how the bed warmer got her into this predicament. She is like this with objects throughout the book, which will endear her to her new family. It is also a great comic device and provides comic relief throughout the story.
Juliana puts up a valiant fight to not be Tarquin’s prostitute. Since her only other choice is actual prostitution, however, she eventually agrees so as to retain her respectability and class level. She marries the cousin and moves into Tarquin’s mansion. She has a separate room, however, one that Tarquin (and not the cousin), has secret access to.
The leads’ love affair heats up as Juliana finds herself wildly attracted to Tarquin despite her resentment of his manipulation. Tarquin thinks he has done Juliana a favor with his scheme even though he left Juliana with no choice in the matter. After all, she has a title, is living in luxury and has him as a lover without paying a socially ostracizing price for doing so. What else could a woman want?
Juliana dedicates herself to the larger cause of freeing women from the slavery of prostitution. She made friends with some of the other women in the brothel while hiding out there, and continues her friendships with them. She urges them to organize so that they can get better conditions and not be victims, as she sees herself.
Tarquin is falling in love with Juliana. He has no intention of letting her go even when his cousin dies and he has the child as heir to the Viscount. He is still engaged to the woman Quentin, his brother, is secretly in love with even though Tarquin himself is not in love with her. This enrages Quentin who has been inspired by Juliana’s rebellions against Tarquin’s authority.
Tarquin becomes a man dismayed and besieged – by the woman he loves, by his younger brother, and by his own machinations. At one point, when he rushes to Juliana’s rescue from being arrested and jailed for being in a riot with the prostitutes, he asks his brother why she obsesses about these women. Quentin tells him that she identifies with them because they’ve been exploited as she was. “Exploitation! Who in the hell has exploited her?” Tarquin yells. “You have,” Quentin responds.
Tarquin, Juliana, and Quentin each have symbolic roles in this book. Tarquin represents the enormous power of England’s male aristocracy and ruling class in the early 1800s. Juliana represents all women forced into marriages by this class as well as the prostitutes they used. Quentin is the rebel against primogeniture and the power it confers upon the eldest son while leaving remaining children as the eldest son’s pawns. The rebellion that these characters stage against Tarquin foreshadows the larger rebellions against England’s ruling class that will come about in the future.
Feather flawlessly executes this provocative book. She makes it utterly believable that much as Juliana fights the aristocratic system, she loves the man concealed underneath the title. Tarquin has a lot of learning to do in order to gain her love and his brother’s respect. He has difficult compromises to make just as England itself will make compromises in its future to satisfy more of its people. I would generally recommend all of Feather’s V books as her finest and this one as the very best of that series. If you read nothing else by her, do read Vice.
Grade: A
Book Type: European Historical Romance
Sensuality: Hot
Review Date: 14/09/20
Publication Date: 1996
Recent Comments …
Yep
This sounds delightful! I’m grabbing it, thanks
excellent book: interesting, funny dialogs, deep understanding of each character, interesting secondary characters, and also sexy.
I don’t think anyone expects you to post UK prices – it’s just a shame that such a great sale…
I’m sorry about that. We don’t have any way to post British prices as an American based site.
I have several of her books on my TBR and after reading this am moving them up the pile.
Over the years, AAR has had many a guest reviewer. If we don't know the name of the reviewer, we've placed their reviews under this generic name.
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Reading right now. On page 166 of a 400-page version of the book. So far
1) She’s appalled that anyone would expect her to prostitute herself – even to a duke – but she agrees to the blackmail because she’s convinced she’s going to be burnt at the stake for murdering her husband. To save herself, she agrees to the duke’s evil plan although she is determined to make him pay . . . except all it takes is one kiss to have her swooning at his feet. Three or four times, so far.
2) You got to hand it to that magic wang: in literally one paragraph (made up of a total of five relatively short sentences) we go from giving her a moment to “become accustomed” to pushing through that troublesome maidenhead (complete with cries of pain – and not the good kind) to immediately and instantaneously becoming rapturous, life-changing, simultaneous orgasms for both of them. Voila!
3) One completely cartoonish, cardboard cutout of a bad guy, lusting after his father’s wife, abused horseflesh and all . . .
4) The worst homophobic nastiness I’ve seen in print in a long time: every time the wastrel cousin is on page, there’s another nasty detail piled on: dying of the pox, drunk every moment the day, green-skinned and shrunken chest, rumored to be diddling alter boys at St. Paul’s cathedral . . .
Wow. Just, wow. This is c1996.
It’s a shame there aren’t more magic wangs in real life….
I don’t remember much about this one, but I did read it around 10 years ago and gave it 2 out of 5 stars. I read two others in this her V series that fared better but doubtless also have some old school elements: Virtue, which was my favorite and had a Faro’s Daughter vibe to it, and Valentine, which I gave 3 out of 5 stars. Feather has always been wildly inconsistent for me, but she has in some of her older books tackled some settings and periods outside of Regency England which can be interesting when old school characterizations don’t overburden the stories.
The setting for this one is 1750 London . . . with references to wigs, high heels, snuff boxes, men in brightly colored evening wear, and hoop skirts. In fact, the comic relief about Juliana’s clumsiness in the review is based in large part on 1) her large #10 size feet and 2) her inability to keep from knocking valuable objects off table tops. The hoop skirts help to keep the “comedy” flowing.
I bet that if this was reviewed now, it would drop from the ‘hot’ category to the ‘warm’ category, as expectations for sexual content in romance have changed a lot since 1999.
What a lark! First off, would I have read this in 1999? Maybe. In 2020? No. The lark? I clicked on “Other”, the reviewer, and went back in time to see so many books I’ve read and loved. I even found one I reviewed as a “guest” for AAR in 2002!!! A really fun romp down Memory Lane. Loved it.
Oh! Tell me what review it is and I’ll add your name!
Not there now. When I looked this morning on my phone the reviewer of Vice was given as “other” not “guest reviewer”. Brings up slightly different list.
What’s the review book?
Can’t remember but it’s not there. I’ll puton the old thinking cap!
I think it was A Marriage to Fight For by Raina Lynn. Found my amazon review from 2001!!
I’ll append your name. And if you want to do any more reviewing…..
Maybe but ad hoc only, sadly. Time constraints abound.
Here it is!
https://allaboutromance.com/book-review/a-marriage-to-fight-for-raina-lynn/
I enjoyed looking through the books reviewed by “Other” which is different from the “guest reviewer” list. I was going to go back and take a second look at some of the reviews, since they were from books or authors unknown to me, but had DIK reviews, like Vise. Certainly not a big deal, but I wondered why it changed.
They are the same list.
I have been, when I find an Other review, converting them to Guest Reviewer just for site consistency.
This sounds very forced seduction-y. Anyone read it?
That would be a big yes.