Forever & Ever

Show Notes

We’re finishing our journey through Patricia Gaffney’s Wyckerley trilogy. Published in 1996, the final installment in the trilogy, Forever & Ever, is an enemies-to-lovers class difference romance between Connor Pendarvis, a man who goes undercover in copper and tin mines to expose shoddy working conditions, and Sophie Deene, the young and beautiful owner of Wyckerley’s copper mine. What do you do when the woman of your dreams is also the source of your suffering? Is this a gap that can, or should, be bridged? Forever & Ever takes on the difficult questions but doesn't provide easy answers – there’s no refined neatness to life and love, and labor is at the center of everything.

Books Referenced

To Love & To Cherish by Patricia Gaffney

Forever & Ever by Patricia Gaffney

Emma by Jane Austen

The Blackshear Series by Cecilia Grant

Stormfire by Christine Monson

Two Rogues Make a Right by Cat Sebastian

Suddenly You by Lisa Kleypas

Private Arrangements by Sherry Thomas

Works Cited:

Miners, Quarrymen, and Saltworkers by Raphael Samuel

Transcript

Chels

Welcome to Reformed Rakes, a historical romance podcast that will report OSHA violations. My name is Chels. I'm the writer of the romance Substack The Loose Cravat, a romance book collector and book tok under the username Chels_eBooks.

Beth

I'm Beth, and I'm on booktok under the name Bethhaymondreads.

Emma

I'm Emma, a law librarian writing about justice and romance at the substack Restorative Romance.

Chels

Today we're finishing our Journey through Patricia Gaffney's Wyckerley trilogy, published in 1996. The final installment in the trilogy, Forever and Ever, is an enemies to lovers class difference romance between Connor Pendarvis, a man who goes undercover in copper and tin mines to expose shoddy working conditions, and Sophie Dean, the young and beautiful owner of Wyckerley's copper mine called Guelder. Historical romance loves to explore class difference romances and romantic pairings. Think of the governess and the Duke, the courtesan and the vicount, the merchant and the debutante. The conflict comes from external perceptions of the relationship, miscommunication based on different upbringings, and sometimes scorched pride. Forever and Ever does all three. But because the conditions and mines in the victorian era were so unforgiving, the stakes are inevitably raised. Quote the Cornish miner inched his way forward by painful degrees. The tin and copper were thinly decimated by very hard rock, and progress in boring them was very slow, writes Raphael Samuel in Miners, Quarrymen, and Salt workers. He then quotes Joseph Watson in 1843. One, two, or 3ft in a week or a few inches daily is often the whole amount of the united operations of 20 or 30 men.

Chels

Quote in a copper mine, the worker also had to contend with great heat. The fast ends, which the tut worker encountered at the blind extremities of a shaft, were possibly the most murderous mining conditions in the world, with so little oxygen and so much heat that it's impossible to work for more than 20 minutes at a stretch. What do you do when the woman of your dreams is also the source of your suffering? Is this a gap that can or should be bridged Forever and Ever? Takes on the difficult questions, but doesn't provide easy answers. There's no refined neatness to life and love, and labor is at the center of everything. Okay, so now we've read all three of the Wyckerley trilogy. What are your initial thoughts on Forever and Ever?

Beth

I feel like I like it more as more time passes. Like, I read it. And then I texted Emma that she needed to read it immediately so we could all talk about it, and then I reread it again this morning and, yeah, just every time I'm noticing new things because, like, prepared for them. Like, okay, I know this dynamic. So I just noticed, say, Connor's anger more. Just how he will bait Sophie sometimes into an argument. I just. I feel for both of them. It's not like I just feel deeply for, like, I. I see why he's so angry, but that anger just spills over sometimes.

Emma

I think about this book being the third in the trilogy, especially since we've recorded these episodes. Like, talking about the other two books, I think I would still will say To Have and To Hold is my favorite, which makes sense, like, prison, sort of justice, questions of. That is sort of, like, my favorite thing in romance. But I think it makes so much sense for this to be the last one in the series. And I think we're going to talk about this later when we talk about all three together. But, like Chels said, labor at the center of everything. We get two books that are set in this town where the economy is based on this mine, and it's sort of behind all the activity in Wyckerley is the economy of the mine, and people are endangered by the mine in the other two books, the community centers around the mine schedule, and now we have someone who's literally going down into the mine and also is upset about it. This is not just a backdrop anymore. It's something to be confronted. It's something to be questioned. So it makes sense that this is the last one because it's sort of been going towards this the whole time.

Emma

We're finally at the center of Wyckerley. We are at the mine that just everything about Wyckerley centers on. So it really does feel like a culmination, and it's like, you can't have Wyckerly without the mine, and you can't have the series without this book. Yeah.

Beth

The mind's been looming in the background for a little while now.

Chels

I felt so annoying before you both had read this book because I kept being like, just wait till you get to Forever and Ever. Because I think I'm like you, Emma. I feel like I don't know if to have and to hold or Forever and Ever is my favorite, probably to have and to hold, but I have such a soft spot for this one. I like it so much.

Emma

I think you could read to have and to hold by itself. I don't think Forever and Ever. I hope people read this book, and if you want to read it without reading the other two, because it calls to you. I think that's fine, but I do think this book is very importantly connected to the other two in a way that I felt like I read To Have and to Hold without reading the other two first and I was able to enjoy it and fall in love with it immediately. This one, I think really needs to be like you need that loomingness of the mind. It's so important to this book. So I think maybe that's the difference. It's like to have it to hold as a standalone, but Forever and Ever as a part of Wyckerley is maybe my ranking.

Chels

Yeah, that's a very good point, I think. Particularly because Forever and Ever wraps up a lot of the stories of the side characters, so that impact just would make no sense. Whereas to having to hold the side character subplots are usually more contained. But yeah, so it's a big one again. So I guess I'll go ahead and get into the plot summary. The book begins on a beautiful June day with Connor waiting for his brother Jack to deliver him a letter from the Radamanthus Society. Connor works for the society, and they're the ones who've sent him to Wyckerley to do some undercover reporting on the local copper mine Guelder. The Radamanthus Society's report calls Wyckerley, quote, a pokey, undistinguished hamlet. But Connor disagrees, thinking they must never have witnessed true poverty. Connor is from an impoverished mining town in Cornwall where he buried all of his family, save his older brother Jack, before the age of 20. When Jack arrives to meet him, Connor notes how gaunt he's looking. Jack used to be a real miner, and Connor, who never mined before he started reporting, has been assuming Jack's identity to get work. Jack stopped mining after contracting consumption, and now Connor is the caretaker of their reduced family, a role reversal that makes both him and his older brother uncomfortable.

Chels

Connor tells Jack what he knows about Gelder, namely that it's operated by a woman named Dean. But their conversation is interrupted by the arrival of children, led by a beautiful blonde woman who Connor assumes as their teacher. Connor is immediately smitten with her, thinking uncharacteristically fanciful thoughts about her golden hair, the graceful curve of her back, the solicitousness in her posture. She leads the children in song, and Connor and Jack continue to watch, fully charmed. After the song, a young girl enthusiastically leaps onto her teacher, only to get the teacher's hair stuck on her button. Before the teacher has a chance to attempt to untangle herself, Connor arrives to assist, telling her that he'd sooner cut off his hand than a single strand of her beautiful hair, an expression that he internally admits was the most fatuous thing Connor had ever said in his life. He frees the woman's hair and he awkwardly flirts with her, telling her that her choir sounds like a band of angels. He's interrupted by the arrival of Christian Morell carrying a baby and telling the woman who he called Sophie that there's a Mrs. Mayhew waiting for her. Connor immediately deflates, thinking that Christie, the vicar of the town and the hero of Wyckerley book one, is her husband, until Christie subtly remarks that his wife has gone to Tavistock to buy him baby carriage.

Chels

Connor quickly rebounds until Christie tells him that the woman that he just met is named Sophie Dean, the owner of the Gelder mine that Connor is investigating. Connor thinks in the blink of an eye, the girl of his dreams had turned into an enemy. Sophie Dean inherited the mine from her father, Tolliver, when he died two years prior. She's proud of her work in the mine and proud that her father thought she was, quote, as smart as a man and capable of following in his footsteps. Sophie is business minded, but she still has the cultish grace of an extremely attractive young woman and notably overspends on fashion that is a bit out of place in Wyckerley. Sophie's uncle Eustace, otherwise known as Mayor Vanstone, is the most important man in town, saved for the Mortons, formerly known as Rachel Wade and Viscount Sebastian D'Aubrey from Wyckerley book two. Her uncle, the mayor, wants her to dine with and be courted by a man named Robert Crotty, the son of a brewer who is attempting to social climb his way to the gentry. And Sophie begrudgingly accepts, noting that she is happy not being married at this time.

Chels

When Connor arrives at the Gelder mine to apply for work, he's sent to meet with Sophie, who is dismayed to learn that the man she had a flirtation with is a miner. Connor becomes embarrassed, then angry, lashing out at Sophie in response to her snobbish dismissal, she begrudgingly offers him a job at a rate he notes is lower than a nearby mine, but when he protests, she tells him that Caranbara is twice the size of Gelder. Connor is dejected, thinking that, quote two days ago she twinkled her eyes at him, smiled up into his face like an angel. Today she acted as if his miner's garb had a bad smell. When Connor begins his work in the mind, he's paired with a talkative man who's also from Cornwall named Trantor Fox. Trantor, like most of the miners at Gelder, is a fan of Sophie, who remains a source of idle gossip and sometimes lewd speculation among them. Connor's first day at Gelder is a source of tedium and fatigue. He climbs an endless series of ladders, noting that there's nowhere to stop, nowhere to rest. He thinks it was exactly like a treadmill and needlessly pointless and punitive, though the men condemned a climate, had committed no crime except poverty and an absence of choices and a social system that sentenced them to low pay and a lifetime of drudgery.

Chels

When he returns home, Jack asks him what's wrong with the mine. He says the same things that are wrong with all of them, low wages, bad air, unsafe conditions, no contingencies for underground emergencies. He also overheard the mine captain at Gelder refer to the deaths of a few miners as natural wastage. Later, when he and Jack are at the local pub, Connor learns that Sophie is giving a penny reading, even though Trantor Fox warns him that it's a book for females. Connor can't help but leave to see what's going on. When he arrives, Sophie is reading the final pages of Jane Austen's Emma. His sudden arrival catches her off guard, and Sophie starts stumbling over her words and getting nervous. When she begins a discussion after the book, Connor stuns everyone by declaring that Emma was a snob. Sophie tries to defend Emma, saying that she learned from her mistakes, but in doing so she highlights some unflattering plot points, namely that Emma came around to Harriet marrying a farmer only after it was revealed that Harriet wasn't gentry. Connor becomes even more combative, flustering and angering Sophie. After the penny reading, they take turns insulting each other, and Sophie refuses his offer to see her home.

Chels

The next day, Connor falls through a hole in the mine with no one else to attend to his injuries, Sophie sees to his wounds. The tension around them both is thick, but they resume flirting again with Connor, reminding her of the day they met in the sunshine. With no prejudices keeping them apart, he asks Sophie to go for a walk with him, and she declines, explaining that next Saturday is midsummer day, a big day for the children's choir. He says he'll see her there at midsummer day, Connor and Sophie seek each other out, flirting and laughing and getting closer. Sophie asks Connor if he had a large family, and he hesitantly answers that he had four brothers and one sister had, but the past tense is lost on Sophie in that moment, Robert Crotty finds Sophie and Connor's company and then asks her to come back with him instead to eat near Sophie's family. Sophie declines, telling Robert that she's spending the day with Connor, one of the tutmen in her mind. Later, there's another confrontation, this time with Sophie's snobbish cousin Honoria, who won't lower herself to greet Connor or look him in the eye.

Chels

When Sophie sends Honoria away, Connor gets angry, saying that she was trying to shock Honoria and that she wasn't being kind but condescending. He leaves her, and Sophie chases after him, offering an apology. She says this is so new to her that she wasn't trying to condescend, and Connor readily accepts her apology, saying that she's easy to forgive. They kiss and make plans to meet after church the next day, but Sophie never shows up. Connor waits for hours, feeling hard done by and wondering if he had any right to feel that way, since he's lying to Sophie about his identity. Connor is angry, but he won't admit it to himself. He returns home alone and finishes his report on the mine, rationalizing that this decision was not spurred on by Sophie's rejection. In what he calls dry, factual language, he writes about the mine's shortcoming and safety hazards. Quote, the worst was the system of ladders. So he began with that. Now 160 fathoms deep, Gelder still relied on the old 50 foot ladders that had been using for 20 years. Virtually perpendicular fathom after fathom, with no resting place except the narrow dollar platform and a manhole leading to the ladder under it.

Chels

Calculating, he reckoned that at 160 pounds, a man climbing from bottom to top exerted a constant force equivalent to raising the weight of one ton in the space of a minute. The consequence was exhaustion, which led to carelessness, which led to accidents. Wages were low. Tutman and tributors earned an average of 50 shillings a month, but ended up paying about 40% of it back to the company for supplies, candles, powder, fuses, drawing and dressing costs. The heat was intolerable at the deepest levels, where men routinely lost three or four pounds of body weight at a single eight hour core. There was no training at Gelder, no apprenticeship. Sophie had installed a ventilator, but it was inadequate, and bad air contributes to miners'consumption there was an attitude of what Connor called tolerance towards accident and catastrophes, as he mentioned to Jack earlier, talking about the mind captain, saying several deaths a year is natural wastage. When Connor finishes the report, Jack comes up to talk to him about a local girl he's interested in, Sydney Tims. Connor tells him that he's finished his report for Gelder and Jack asks if he's hurried it along after Sophie's rejection.

Chels

Connor denies it but then he guiltily adds a postscript to the report that says morale at the mine was high and that Sophie has plans for adding more ventilators. He then adds that the report is preliminary and he needs another fortnight to finish his work. When Connor arrives at the mine the next day he finds out that Sophie has had an accident. He rushes to her home and sees she's injured her foot in a driving accident which prevented her from showing up for her arrangement with Connor. Connor is embarrassed by the bitter thoughts he had the day before and was relieved that Sophie didn't stand him up. She asks him to come see her again and Connor accepts. They establish a routine. Connor visits once per day guiding Sophie around her garden flirting and laughing with her. They have an easy intimacy in their isolation and they've let their guards down. She teaches him the names of her roses and they kiss. One day they're interrupted by Sophie's uncle, Mayor Vanstone. Instead of hiding Connor from him Sophie declares his presence. It's clear they've been fooling around in the garden and not talking about mine business and Vanstone is clearly angry about his discovery but won't confront Sophie and Connor's presence.

Chels

Connor doesn't feel right leaving Sophie to handle this on her own but he's not sure what else can be done so he leaves. He arrives home to find a letter from the Radamantha society. They want him to work for them in London and write speeches. Connor, who felt like his career has stagnated ever since the attorney he worked for died years ago can't even be relieved to be getting his life back realizing that Sophie is the cost of his ambition. Later, Sophie waits for Connor to return to her thinking that this is the last time they can be together. When Connor arrives he tells her about the offer from the Radhamantha society but he doesn't tell her about the investigative work he did in her mind. Even though she was resigned to ending things Sophie asks him to stay and asks him to work for her in some other capacity. He declines and they decide it's their last night together. Sophie invites him inside to her house and they sleep together. They confess their love for each other and in the light of the morning Connor decides he can't leave Sophie. He wants to tell her the truth and ask her to wait for him to be a success so they can marry.

Chels

He doesn't have time for this confession. They are interrupted by the arrival of Sophie's housekeeper and Sophie's impending plans for a tea party. He leaves, planning to make his confession. Later. At the tea party, Mayor Vanstone arrives carrying a report from the Radamanthus Society. They published Connor's preliminary investigation. Sophie, who knew Connor by his brother's name Jack, is devastated by this betrayal. Connor arrives at the tea party and explains that he used his brother's name and qualifications to get the job at Gelder, but that the report that was published was greatly embellished from what he wrote. He tries to explain further, but Sophie tells him she never wants to see him again. Later, when he forces his way into her house to make an explanation, Sophie tells Connor that she hates him, that he's taught her how low she can sink. Wounded, Connor retaliates, saying you're the worst kind of capitalist because you soothe your social conscience with nonsense. Leading the church choir, teaching your condescending literature to a handful of sleepy Sophie worshiping burgers one night a week, believing your lady bountiful while down in the mind that you didn't do one damn thing to acquire.

Chels

Men are losing their youth and their vigor a drop every day, becoming weak, demoralized, and diseased. Sophie slaps him and Connor leaves Wyckerley. Once he's gone, Sophie starts to see Gelder not through her father's eyes but through Connor's, and slowly starts implementing improvements, visiting the depths of the mine to give her a better idea of what her workers experience. Robert karate visits Sophie to court her again, telling her that he's going to run for a seat in the House of Commons, which is being vacated by a member of the wig party, Clive Nolton. Robert asks Sophie to marry him. Sophie declines, but Robert does not accept her answer as definitive. Sophie then finds out she's pregnant from her night with Connor and seeks out Robert to see if he will still marry her. She confesses her pregnancy to Robert and Robert's reaction is extreme. He scares her and calls her a whore, saying he wouldn't touch her now if she asked for it. Sophie later finds Connor's new residence. He rejected the offer from the Radamantha society and took a menial job as an attorney's clerk and Exeter. Their meeting is tense and Sophia tells Connor about her pregnancy.

Chels

She asks him to marry her but tells him he doesn't need to live with her. She just wants his name for the baby's sake. Connor accepts, but not kindly. They have Christy Morrell marry them in a private ceremony and Sophie brings Connor to her uncle's house to announce the marriage. It's not received well and a frustrated Connor tells Sophie that they are now going to Cornwall to visit his family on honeymoon. It's there that Sophie discovers Connor's family is dead. Connor's father died of consumption from his work in the mine, two of his brothers in mining accidents. One of his brothers was stillborn. His mother died from grief and his baby sister from a weak heart. He now only has Jack, who is also sickly from his work in the mine. On their trip to Cornwall, Connor and Sophie confidence in each other and become closer, acting more like a married couple. When they return to Wyckerley, Sophie proudly shows Connor the changes she's implemented in the mine and he's extraordinarily touched. As newlyweds, they are besotted with each other. Connor is approached to run for seat in House of Commons, the same seat that Robert karate is running for.

Chels

He and Sophie attend a party at Clive Nolton's house and it's expected that Nolton will hand pick his successor. Connor and Sophie clash over Connor's outfit before they arrive and Connor's on edge at the dinner when Robert goads Connor about his marriage with Sophie. A drunken Connor makes a scene and demands that Sophie leave with him. She declines and Connor tells her that she can stay the night at the party, but he's going home. Sophie makes her apologies to the group and not wanting them to know that Connor left her there alone, she pretends she's leaving with him instead. Walking the 2 miles home, it begins to storm and Sophie gets soaked in the cold rain. She's violently ill when she returns, and to her and Connor's devastation, she miscarries the baby. Connor is unable to coax Sophie out of her depression even after weeks of trying. He thinks to himself that if Sophie was sick with grief, Connor was dying of loneliness. They were like two shipwrecked swimmers, unable to touch hands, each doomed to watch the other's slow drowning. Jack tells Connor that he's leaving Wyckerley because his consumption is getting worse and he wants to die alone.

Chels

Connor turns to Sophie for Comfort, but she's still nearly catatonic. Dejected, he says that he thinks he's only hurting her and he tells her he has to leave soon after, Sophie learns from her uncle that Connor has been accused of stealing from her mind and that Robert Karate is taking this information to Clive Nolton to discredit Connor and eliminate him from running for house. This spurs Sophie to action and she rushes to Nolton's house to defend Connor. She finds karate, Nolton and Connor together and says that Connor is innocent. Karate tries to embarrass Sophie by telling Nolton about how Sophie proposed to him after she became pregnant. Nolton, who dearly loved his wife and is touched by Connor and Sophie's affection for each other, threatens karate, telling him that if he takes the information public, he will make life very difficult for him. With karate out of the running, Nolton agrees to meet with Connor to see what his positions are, noting that Conor is likely too radical for his tastes. Connor says he doesn't care if he's ever elected for anything. He will always remember this as the day he got his wife back.

Chels

Of course, Connor didn't steal from the mine. That was Jack. In his attempt to make things right, Jack puts himself in danger to rescue miners from an accident at Sophie's mine, becoming a local hero. In the epilog, Connor and Sophie are blissfully in love. Connor has newly won Nolton's seat and Jack is still sickly but slowly recovering. Yay. Oh, my God.

Beth

I love being on that emotional roller coaster.

Emma

Happily ever after--eventually.

Chels

Yeah. So I guess we can start kind of at the beginning. I want to talk about the scene where Connor and Sophie meet, particularly the roller coaster of emotions we watch Connor go through as he continuously recategorizes Sophie in his mind. I think this scene works so well in setting up their dynamic throughout the book, but I'm curious to hear your thoughts.

Beth

I love it. I feel like Connor has a swept off his feet moment when he sees Sophie and he just jumps at the chance to meet her. Like we mentioned in the plot summary, her hair gets caught and Connor goes to help. So this is a quote from the book. Impulsiveness was one of his most dangerous failings, but this was too much like the answer to her prayer. He'd been too distracted to say he took off across the green at a sprint. So he thinks she's a teacher, which makes sense because she is, like with children, but it also puts her on the same societal footing as him. So I feel like there's this hope when he's running out there to help her. And then, like you said, Chels, he's constantly recategorizing Sophie in his mind. Like, he sees Christy approach and he's like, oh, no, she's the minister's wife. And then he discovers she's not. Then Christy tells him, yeah, that's Miss Dean and Connor's kind of desperate for her to not be the owner of the mine. Like, does Sophie have an aunt, a sister, a mother? Is there another Miss Dean who could be owning this mine?

Beth

And I feel like I want to bring this up because I feel like it shows with all the obstacles removed. They're actually just love at first sight. It's just like this perfect still moment. And then Gaffney does a sledgehammer of, here's your insurmountable barrier to this relationship. Actually, this is your enemy, so good luck.

Emma

It's so funny to think about that all the external factors are why Sophie and Connor can't work. Yeah, but then it's like such a miscommunication heavy book, which we normally characterize as an internal conflict. And it's like this. The way that miscommunication works in this book, we're going to talk about at length because it's so pervasive. But I think for the beginning, it's very like Romeo and Juliet, where he has this immediate reaction to her and he loves her immediately. But then the name and place and context of her is what causes the conflict. And then what plays out throughout the book is that they always are bringing this baggage towards each other. And it's like if they could just get rid of the outside stuff, it would work. And then I think it has an experience of reading a second chance romance. Like, the level of anguish and vitriol that they send towards each other reminds me of private arrangements by Sherry Thomas. But the reason that couple can be so cruel towards each other is because they've known each other for so long and they have all this history together. And it's like, the question is, how can they ever get past their past?

Emma

Sophie and Connor don't have a shared past, but they have this really robust internal lives and worldviews that Gaffney builds out. And I think it becomes believable because Gaffney has the strength of developing characters that are whole individuals and not just archetypes. I was thinking about this especially in the context of the fact that we're at the end of the series. And so we've read all three. And it's just one thing that's astounding to me is how different all three heroes are and all three heroines. I can't say this is what a Gaffney hero is like. This is what a Gaffney heroine was like. I was thinking about this. The other trilogy that we've done is the Cecilia Grant Blackshears series. And I think Grant is also skilled at that. But there's a family at the center of that. So it's like you have the Blackshears in different contexts. But in this book, we have six characters who are also different. They're all in different places in their lives and all of their relationships are so unique. It's just incredible that she can pull off that level of anguish for a first time meeting, which I think you just really associate much more with second chance romances.

Emma

It's like Romeo and Juliet, which is like, the level of anguish that we're working with is incredible.

Chels

Yeah. I feel like you have Sophie and Connor when they're fighting and Sophie and Connor when they're not fighting. And I think something that does when they're not fighting is she just so liberally dowses you with sweetness that even when they're in these really intense, fraught moments and they're thinking kind of the worst things of each other you still believe that they're really in love. And then also, she kind of gives their thoughts kind of layers to them. Connor is thinking, like, I'm probably being unreasonable, but I'm just so angry or things like that where it makes more sense. I do love that you compared this to private arrangements because I kind of thought I was thinking about that, too, kind of before we recorded this episode. Because there's a way that Gigi and Cam and Private Arrangements are, like, at each other's throats all the time. They're so passionate.

Emma

It has the same conflict. I forgot. I forgot about the plot Private Arrangements. I just was thinking about the vibes. And it's like, actually something similar happens in the plot.

Chels

Yeah, that just came back to me. Yeah, it's a lie and they're at each other's throats the entire time. But it's a different type of romance. It's not like a conflict that makes me think that this isn't a romance or that they don't love each other. It's just like, they are just too. Like, Sophie and Connor are very, very prideful people. Like, very intense, prideful people. And I think that's kind of like Gigi and Cam are very willful and stubborn. And so they both kind of are too similar, almost, in a way, where that's why they keep having these conflicts over and over again. Like, Connor and Sophie have a lot more in common than you would think. In the last Wyckerley episode, we spoke about Sebastian's internal monolog when he's sizing up Rachel and identifying with the prurient fervor of justice's past Forever and Ever has a similar showstopper of an internal monolog for me where Connor is explaining how he feels about mining. I'm going to read it and I want to get your thoughts on it. What he hated about mining was the shameful waste it made of a man's life over his head.

Chels

The whole world at grass went about the business of fighting wars or making children, selling shoes, harvesting fields, painting pictures, reading newspapers, dancing, debating, laughing, weeping, and always oblivious to the subterranean sweat shop underfoot. The ceaseless industry of men picking and hammering, breaking and blasting, tutwerking and tributing and dying young so that there could be pennies and tea kettles and trinkets for the vital, unaware souls above.

Emma

It sounds so scary, like the mining scenes in this are. I think there are a couple surgery scenes in other books that are up there with scariness, but Gaffney really makes you feel very claustrophobic when Connor goes down to the mine. And it's also like Connor's sort of extreme reaction, like extreme way of talking about the copper and tin mines, I think shows his sort of one sidedness. I think Gaffney comes down on Connor's side more than Sophie's politically. But the fact that he mentions pennies and tea kettles and trinkets, to be fair, copper and tin mining there is the industry. They do it for other reasons other than these small reasons. It's the traveling and trains. There are other reasons to try and get metals other than the trinkets, but it shows the extreme sort of trauma that Connor associates with the mining that he can't see that this has. If it was safer, there could be usefulness for the production. He's gotten so one sided, I think probably for good reason, but he just associates it with waste and sort of lazy middle class people taking advantage of the lower classes.

Beth

Yeah, I feel like he just associates mining with intense deaths. I don't know if we'll talk about this more later, but just like his entire family, which he's also from a small town that is centered around a mine, but it's more impoverished there. But, yeah, I kind of get it. Who is Connor?

Chels

Yeah, it comes at such a high cost for him and then his family, who didn't really get to enjoy these trinkets or kind of live above ground. I think that's the thing that's really harrowing for me, is there's the invisible labor of it. Like the fact that it's such strenuously hard work and like something in this book, miners, quarrymen, and salt workers, which I kind of wonder if Gaffney read that book just because there was a lot of similarities. Because particularly talking about the mines in Cornwall, the tin mines and the copper mines, there's a lot of things that are almost exactly the same as how she describes it in her book. But something that he mentions is that a lot of the innovation in the Victorian area to mines were not about improving the health or the safety or the intense manual labor that went into mining. So there were all these improvements that could be working with speed, but it doesn't really do anything to help these men who are under there. So I feel like that resentment. I felt that resentment. I'm extremely angry about it. It's just so harrowing. I love this internal monologe.

Chels

I think it's such a mic drop moment from Connor. I think that I understood him better hearing this monolog than I did. He has really tragic backstory, which is kind of a devastating part of the book, which we knew already. He had basically said that his family had died, but Sophie had no idea, and he kind of had been changing the subject. And we didn't quite know the extent of it. We didn't quite know how his relationship with his family as well at that point. And then the fact that the mine, when he goes back to visiting the mine, it's almost completely abandoned. It's just like this deeply sad place. But, yeah, I guess back to the miners Coriann and saltworkers book. So the way that she portrays the ladder system as being very harrowing is basically mentioned in that book. So he says another health hazard was the lengthened journey to work, which involved long hours of toiling up and down perpendicular ladders. There were mines so deep that not less than 3 hours were said to be expended on them. And an hour's journey each way was typical. The first symptoms of failing health among minors and the onset of what was known as the miner's disease were dizziness and exhaustion on the ladders.

Chels

So I think to the miners disease, specifically when I was coming into Jack. So Jack is the only person that he has left, and Jack is very quickly wasting away. So I think Connor is just kind of at this really intense point in his life where he had been striving for something like he was supposed to be the pride of his family, and he's almost lost his entire family. And he's unmoored by his current work situation because he wanted to be an attorney and now, that's not really working out. So I feel for really. He's in a really tough spot.

Emma

Yeah. When I was reading this, the second time, and when I read Chels' quotes that they pulled from the nonfiction book about mining, I was thinking about why Gaffney chooses this industry, because I was thinking about her relationship to Thomas Hardy, which we talked about in an earlier episode. And I don't think Hardy writes about mining. So the connection with Hardy is that Hardy also writes about sort of the southwestern part of England and the relationship between industry and farming there. But most of the Victorian novels, or Victorian set novels about mining are focused on coal rather than copper. Gaffney is accurate in that copper mines are in the southwestern part. Coal mining doesn't really take place there. But the big novel about Victorian coal mining is How Green was my Valley, which is what was written in 1939, but is set in the 19th century, and that's set in Wales. But the arc of that novel is really similar to Connor's hometown, to the point where there's a younger brother who's very intellectual, and his whole family dies and everyone leaves the town. I wouldn't be surprised if Gaffney was aware of that novel or the movie directed by John Ford.

Emma

And then the other one that's very political explicitly is Emile Zola's Germanale, which is a victorian novel, but it's set in France, but it's very much about labor rights. And the hero of that book, Etienne, is very much like a political idealist who sort of finds himself working in mines. And his romantic arc with the woman who works in the mines is tragic, and then it sort of becomes subjugated to his political ideals. Unlike Connor's, who Connor's able to figure out sort of a union between his romance with his working and his political work. But I was thinking about why Gaffney chooses this industry, and I was thinking about the relationship with Regency novels, which take place earlier than the series relationship with land. Usually that's about farming and production. So many of my favorite heroes are like good time fellows from London who learn to settle down once they're given some land to tend to. This is one of my favorite arcs. But then we get into the Victorian period, which is where Wyckerley is set. And Connor's speech about mining really sets a different tone for the relationship with land. The gap between Regency set books and victorian set books, I think, is often that regency is about farming and victorian is about industry.

Emma

Like, we have this land, and it's like there's this romantic relationship with the land. And then in the victorian period, we see trains coming. We see titans of industry, these tycoons. But the heroes of industry are almost never the ones who are doing the work of industry. They're new money tycoons, like Tom Severin in Chasing Cassandra. And that Gaffney addresses this and sort of is like filling this gap in 1996, which is so much earlier than so many of the new money tycoons that I've read, is kind of wild. And I think that gap between Regency and Victorian, you can see where mining is like a subtractive relationship with the land. You're taking something out of the land while farming is additive. And so you're adding something, you're pulling something from the land that you've added to. And also, mining hides lower classes rather than mixes with them. Like how many gentlemen farmers have scenes where they wander onto the fields and do labor with their farmers, and maybe the heroine sees them with their shirt off, and it's like this sort of mixing of classes and the farm. But then the miners, it's like they're literally underground and you can't see them.

Emma

The level of danger in mining doesn't afford that sort of mixing of classes. Like, who would go down in a mine? Why would you risk that? And then there's also all this romanticism of tilling a field, looking out on a horizon, measuring the time by the seasonal elements that we sort of have this English notion of farming that gets so romanticized in regency books, and there's no image of that for mining. It's just not available because of the danger and also because it's this sort of fraught relationship with the land, rather than anything you could romanticize. Even though the romanticizing of farming also has its own problems of romanticizing labor. But at least there's a hyography of it that is not available for mining.

Beth

Yeah, I wanted to touch on what you said about how mining is literally hiding the lower classes. Imagine this was like a movie, which I hope for one day just going to put that out into the universe. Just imagine the camera panning down like you see the most picturesque, ideal green english village, and say, this is our third movie in our trilogy. We love Wyckerley. And then it just pans down below earth, and just miners in this intense heat, like coughing subpar ladders, the dark, like the suffocating closeness of everything. Like, Bethany creates this image that I think is just, like, unparalleled. Like, it's hard to get out of your mind. And just that image of them being literally physically below everyone else. Like Emma says, you're not out in the field mixing together. And then the other thing I wanted to touch on is we've talked a lot about the physical toll, but I can't even imagine what the mental toll of that kind of work would be. And there's this conversation Connor has with Jack after his first day of work at the Gelder mine. Connor's already in investigative mode, and he's documenting the lack of safety guards.

Beth

Like, he's listing them off to Jack. And we've already said this will be the third time I say this or we say this, but I feel like it bears repeating today. So this is from the book, quote, today I heard Jenks, the mine captain, talk about the loss of two or three miners a year as natural wastage. And that is acceptable. That humans are just like. That's just part of, quote unquote, progress. A couple people are going to die. I understand why Connor is just like. His main emotion is just anger. Jack sighs and he says, and so it is. And Connor's frustrated by this attitude that's even among the miners. But I don't really know what Connor kind of expects out of. Like, that is literally your life. You're consumed by this mine. That's all you think about as you're working. That's what you're focused on, your task. I don't know. I don't think you even have the time or the energy to care or think of a different life, which is just devastating.

Chels

Yeah. So something about Jack. And then also Trantor Fox, it's a. It's a devastatingly hard job. It's brutal. It's awful. But that doesn't really change the like, it doesn't change how they are as people like. Jack is a very charming, very fun person. Trantor Fox never shuts up. He's like a delight. He's always hitting on silly, flirting with Sophie. And so I think that's kind of what makes it even more sad is that they're both so vivid, so fun. And I don't think they would describe their lives as tragedies. I think that would be something that Jack would really hardly push against. But for Connor, it is a tragedy because pretty much everyone that he's loved, like the natural wastage, were his brothers and his dad.

Beth

I like that you mentioned their natural personalities. The spark is still there. And it's not like the mind destroys them completely. It's just. What a waste. There's that spark. These are people you don't really get to see much else from them.

Chels

And when you were describing the panning down to underneath the mine, I was just thinking like, oh, how is this? Like, I'm thinking of this Black Mirror episode where it's the one where if you were of a certain class, you have to cycle constantly and you're in this separate room and you have to cycle. And then it's the one where the girl from Downton Abbey does the singing competition or whatever. But it was kind of like the separation of labor. Like something is providing you with something, but you can't see these people. You don't hear from them. They're kind of completely divided from you. And this isn't really an exaggeration either. They're divided from you in the sense that you can't see them working. But as we'll get to later, when we're talking about class difference and there's, like, moments at the Midsummer festival, Honoria is just like, oh, my God, we're not talking to the miners.

Beth

Not making eye contact.

Chels

And Sophie's like, these people work for you, for your father, because the mayor also owns a mine.

Emma

Yeah, and I like that. Gaffney. I think this is also true To Have and To Hold, is that sometimes you read historical romance novels and they'll sort of do, like, social justice dialogue or talking. And it's like, this is how things were and it was a problem. And this is how I feel sometimes about suffragette novels. It's like, oh, if once the women get the right to vote, then we've solved the problem. And I think this is true for both of the ones that, again, I think some of this isn't To Love and To Cherish, but I think to have and to hold and Forever and Ever more directly deal with it is, I don't think you can read either of these novels and walk away thinking like, the problem is solved. Now, even though they're written in 1995 and 1996, it's very clear that Gaffney is using them as lenses for critiquing prison and labor practices at large. And I'm not sure how she does it exactly. It's just throughout the novel that Connor's points are calling out the reader for not being aware of the labor that gets put into the products that they use, just, like, To Have and To Hold.

Emma

I feel like Gaffney's calling out the reader for salacious interest in crime and victims and the cruelty of prison. She's very careful to not make it seem like these problems get resolved after the 1860s, because, of course, they don't. We still have labor issues now with especially probably in some ways, even more some ways, more removed. These things are now happening, especially from the western world. These things are even more removed. We're not going to picnics at all with people who produce most of the things that we consume now in the United States.

Chels

Yeah. And by making Sophie complicit in that, it makes this more of our problem. I feel like in a less deft hand, Sophie would be the one to solve things on her own. She would be fundamentally different from her father. She would have some sort of natural interest or care or something that kind of sets her above. And it's kind of like two things can be true at once, right? Sophie can have some sexism leveled against her for taking on this job and also be proud that she can do this job in this traditional men's role. But also she can still be an oppressor at the same time. And Gaffney is not interested in making that comfortable, which I think it will get. Kind of goes nicely with the next point. So let's talk about the confrontation between Sophie and Connor at the penny reading. So we've talked about how historical romance authors utilize Jane Austen and even Emma on this podcast before. So I'd like to get your thoughts on how Patricia Gaffney uses this book and the penny reading scene to inform us more about Sophie and Connor.

Beth

Yeah, I love how she uses Emma in this book. I sometimes find in other historicals that pair heroes of different classes. Most of the time, the conflict centers on how the family or society would receive the pairing. I think it's interesting to explore where one character honestly thinks they're better than their eventual partner. And obviously Emma by Jane Austen is fertile ground to draw on in that respect. So I think we kind of referenced this scene already, but I'm going to read it. So Gaphane uses a scene where Sophie reads from Emma to define their ideological grounds of each character. So Connor walks in at the end of Emma while they're discussing the book, and Connor calls Emma a snob. He and Sophie go back and forth a bit, and then we get to this part. She gritted her teeth. Emma Woodhouse was her favorite heroine in all of fiction. She would not stand by while this minor defamed her. Sophie defends the character Emma by saying she learns from her mistakes and in her heart is a good person.

Beth

And then Sophie says, and in the end, everyone, Emma, Harriet, Jane, Fairfax, even Mrs. Elton, each marries exactly the right person, not only according to their hearts and their temperaments, but their stations, too. All the couples, Connor interrupts their stations. So Harriet could only marry a farmer because that's what she was born for. No boyishness now. His pale gray eyes spirit her intense and unwavering. Sophie considered the question and answered it honestly. Yes. But she wasn't prepared for the loaded silence that followed or the uneasy feeling that accompanied her reply, although she believed it was correct. So Sophie, like Emma, is a snob. So it poses this question to the reader. How is this couple going to get together when Sophie believes she is out of Connor's reach? Sophie has other criteria where she sees a couple from Emma getting married to the right person because they match in ted permits and hearts, which I think Gaffney is drawing on for a reason. Connor is a good match for her, but she's initially blinded by her snobbery. It's only out of true desperation that she considers marriage to him. And honestly, I think Gaffney got Sophie to the point where the only reason she'd marry him is because her other choices ruination.

Emma

The one thing I would change about this book is that I want Connor to actually read Emma because he just comes in at the end and I want to hear his thoughts about it. I thought that was how when I first read, I was like, Connor's going to read Emma by the end of the book, and he doesn't actually do it. I do think Emma, the book has a really conservative worldview. Conservative as in, things are best when they remain the same. So Emma should stop messing with everything. Like, that's the moral of the story. Emma's right match is Knightly because he's the other person who owns a big house near her. And it's a potential marriage that literally keeps Emma at home, at Highbury. Harriet marries Robert Martin because he's at her level. Sometimes either to denigrate Austen readers who look at the novels as love stories or to elevate Austen as something other than love stories, people will say something like, they aren't about love, they're about property and money. Well, like, duh, they're about both. Something I love about historical romance is that the best ones deal with reconciling a relationship. It can't just be romance because that would shirk duty, property and propriety.

Emma

I think also this goes to some of the tension we talked about between Regency and Victorian. This is a Victorian heroine who's reading a Regency novel and the way that class has changed between those two. Like, technically, Sophie and Connor are, like, in the Regency model are the same class. Right? Like, they're not an aristocracy or landed gentry. Like, neither of them are at the level of Emma. They're both at the level of Harriet. But now that we have industry, we have a bourgeoisie. And so Sophie is now above Connor in a way, like in the Victorian period, that she wouldn't have been in the Regency period because there was no mine that she owns in the Regency period. And Connor gets frustrated with Sophie for not wanting to marry a miner, but she's also the miner's boss. Like, that's a relationship that maybe is fraught in different ways. And she's in this tenuous position as a female owner of the mine, which Wyckerley's economy is dependent on. It isn't that Sophie's not a snob. She is a snob, but her snobbishness does have a basis in material reality and concerns for her community. And I don't think Gaffney comes down on the side of Connor's idealism is correct.

Emma

And Sophie needs to learn a lesson, given Connor's political aspirations and the accompanying upward mobility that he achieves through those aspirations, because that's an important part of Connor and Sophie solving their relationship. The honeymoon phase of their relationship is when they're siloed off in the garden without any external factors, like class or gender realities or expectations. But those are their realities, and they have to deal with their preconceived notions head on. Like, you can't just ignore the world that you live in. And I think that's the journey of Connor, is that he has to recognize that these are real concerns for him and Sophie. They can't live in just the garden. Also, Sophie's a snob, but Connor is also kind of a like, so much of Sophie's snobbishness about is perceived by Connor. Like, Connor's like sophie's thinking this about me because I'm a miner. It's like, is she thinking that, or are you thinking that? Connor, he also sort of has to go in that journey of what are his class notions that he's projecting a little bit.

Chels

Yeah. So I've been thinking about that since I read your note. I think if Connor read Emma in its entirety, he probably would have ended up liking Emma in spite of himself because she's a little mean. There are moments in his arguments with Sophie where they both go just, like, a little too far and they're both exhilarated by it. So something that I've been thinking kind of a lot lately, and you've both kind of hit on this is kind of like the question of, would Sophie marry Connor if she didn't get pregnant? Like, if she didn't have to. And I think part of that hypothetical kind of erases Connor's ambition because he isn't the farmer in Emma or the miner he's pretending to be. Like, as you mentioned, he wasn't raised like his brothers were.

Chels

And so he has that guilt that's associated with that, and it's almost rendered useless if he doesn't actually rise up the ranks. So this isn't really erase Sophie's snobbishness. But I do think this quote from the midsummer fair where Sophie is, like, looking at him and she's trying to understand why she finds him attractive is so interesting. So she's thinking it was something subtler that she couldn't quite put her finger on, but she knew she wasn't imagining it. She'd noticed it before. And the way that minors treated him affectionately, but more formally, a little more respectfully, the way men treat a leader. Then again, perhaps she was imagining it, deceiving herself, pretending he was different from the others because she wanted him to be, needed him to be different in order to justify her interest in him. And so something that I think is really interesting about that is, like, she is identifying that he is a little bit of an other in the mind and that she sees him as different from the minors. And she's questioning, like, am I doing this just because I need this to happen in order to justify my romantic interest in him?

Chels

But the answer of that question, you can't really, because what she's noticing is real. Connor is different. Connor is not actually working in the mine. He's a terrible miner. He's just been able to get away with it. But people like him because he doesn't talk very much and is affable when needs to be. But it's kind of an interesting thing, this hypothetical of, would Sophie ever do? Like, well, you have to completely erase who Connor is because Connor is not content to be a minor. Connor hates being a minor. He's very ambitious. He wants to rise up in the ranks, not for class reasons like Sophie. He has that big chip on his shoulder, but he wants to make his life worthwhile, wants to make his family's sacrifice, I suppose. Or maybe the fact that he didn't share in his family's grief, he wants to justify that some way.

Beth

All the times that Sophie is questioning Connor, like, how do you know this? And he's like, I know what a metaphor is. And she's just like, but how? If you're a minor. And then he gets incredibly defensive every time. Like, well, what's wrong with being a minor? And it's just like this endless cycle of, like, she sees something different and, like, said, like, it's definitely there. But he's just like, why are you looking down on me?

Chels

Why? When he says et tu brute? And she's like.

Emma

If you want to convince people that you're an uneducated miner, stop quoting Shakespeare. Connor. He's so bad at lying,

Beth

but he wants her to see him differently. Sorry, go ahead.

Emma

He's also, like, bragging about, yes, he.

Beth

Desperately wants to be like, I am more than this, actually.

Emma

But I think with class differences, when the hero is the one who is, like, the lower class, though, again, they're kind of the same class. It's like this new thing for them where there's a difference between them, but it's like Connor feels the need to improve himself. I think there's also this aspect of gender for that, where it's like, if the roles were reversed, I don't know if Sophie would feel the need to go to London to make her mark on the world and so it's like he's trying to make himself on equal footing with his wife. And that's part of the conflict later is, did I marry you for your money? That's what people are going to think. People are going to not understand why we're together if I'm not achieving a certain kind of clout in the politics. And that's something that he has to confront, that he thinks he has these evolved. Like, he actually. He's kind of conservative in the way he views their gender relations. And Sophie, as the owner of the mine, he's, like, happy for her to be the owner and be accomplished and thinks that she can do it and smart enough.

Emma

But he still has this sort of chip on his shoulder about being the man who earns less money or has less clout in their marriage. So, yeah, he has to reconcile that as well, which I think that is a secondary plot for them because the labor stuff and the class stuff is so central to the community that they're in. But it is like Connor has to develop his own thoughts and his own sort of preconceived baggage as well.

Chels

I first brought up Forever and Ever in our miscommunication episode because this book is rife with miscommunication. But I think it works in the best way. So Gaffney actually lampshades it. After one of their many arguments, Connor thinks, were they doomed to reenact this stupid scenario for the rest of their lives? How could they break out of it? By talking, of course. But how could they talk when they were both so full of anger and resentment that they couldn't see straight? So how do you feel about how Gaffney layers the conflict around miscommunication in this book?

Beth

Okay, look. My favorite Jane Austen quote comes from Pride and Prejudice, and it's angry people are not always wise. And I think this is very apparent in Sophie and Connor's second interaction, which shows how they both feel embarrassed and prideful. So they first meet at this magical Romeo and Juliet. He sees her, discovers that, actually, yes, it is a Sophie dean who owns a mine. And then they talk when he gets hired on at the Geldner mine. So this is a thought that Connor has about himself. "But Pride, Connor had been told a hundred times, was his biggest weakness, and she'd made the mistake of wounding it. When that had happened, his most natural defense was aggression." And I feel like a lot of basically what Gaffney is doing, I feel like, is just like emotion is informing their communication. And Gaffney regularly having something Connor do, prideful and stubborn and embarrassed, kind of elevates the class conflict that is happening, because you have to have feelings about that. It's not just, like, an overarching system in your life that only shows up when it's convenient. It's always going to be there. It's always going to be present.

Beth

And I feel like I'm kind of being hard on Sophie. I actually do really like her. I'm just kind of, like, fascinated by how she is nice but also snobby. And Sophie won't marry Robert Crotty because she can't see herself marrying the son of a beer maker. So she has these feelings of superiority, and they don't just disappear because she has romantic feelings for Connor. And I'm not surprised a lot of Connor's actions are rooted in anger, because I think that is the most common reaction to an unjust system. Like I read before, he knows that pride is his downfall. So this is another thought he has, or he's, like, thinking about. But pride was still his downfall, and he was still smarting from the insult of her disillusionment, the dismay in her voice when she'd said, you're a minor. Two days ago, he'd been a man, and she treated him like one. Today he was a miner and so far beneath her, she didn't want to stand next to him.

Emma

Chels sold this book to us as Connor and Sophie misunderstanding each other, but also those misunderstandings being based in truth, which I think is like a strength of Gaffney. When people complain about misunderstandings, it's like, why don't you understand the literal, literal misinterpretations I think is the one that people get the most frustrated with. This is like it's misunderstanding. But yeah. Connor thinks Sophie looks down on him, so she must be coming from a place of thinking he's not worthy of her. But she does look down on him when he's a miner and then when he's a radical but loves him anyway. So it's like he's doing a bad faith interpretation of the truth of Sophie. Sophie thinks Connor thinks she's silly and uncaring, so he could never understand the depths of her connection to the mind and her community. He does think this. He does think of her as sort of this uncaring capitalist, but he also thinks that she's incredibly smart and capable and he sees her kindness with people in her community. This book is not a bodice ripper, though. Actually, I was thinking about when Chels was giving the plot summary.

Emma

I was like, it kind of is structured like a bodice ripper because Connor sees Sophie's harm to him as so acute. It reminds me sort of of the arc of a bodice ripper. But the conflict reminds me of how we felt at the end of Stormfire's happily ever after, where we have the sense that Catherine and Sean are just kind of going to be keep doing this. You get the happily ever after because they're together. But at the end of Stormfire, I was like, I don't think Catherine and Sean are going to be living a conflict free lives for the rest of their coupledom. And I do think Connor and Sophie's fights in the future, like when they're married, are gonna be kind of about this, that she is going to be able to forgive him for the lying about his identity and he can understand her position in Wyckerley, but he's going to keep pushing her towards idealism and she's going to keep pushing him towards pragmatism. But they have so much practice loving each other through the conflict that you buy the happily ever after anyway. But you do have sort of the model of like, oh, what their marriage is going to be like is going to be centered on the same conflict over and over again.

Emma

You just now buy that they're going to trust each other a little bit more through those conflicts.

Chels

Yeah. I absolutely adore how Gaffney uses the miscommunication in this book because, as you mentioned, Emma, their perception of the other person's thoughts is only slightly more uncharitable than it actually is. But it's that slight deviation where you find the world of conflict, and they don't want to be in conflict with each other because both of them are so proud and defensive. They continuously land themselves back there. So in Connor's internal monologe, which is the very same page after he says, why can't we just talk to each other? Is really telling about what is important to him. He thinks it wouldn't have mattered if Nolton had set a crown on his head tonight and called him your highness. When things went wrong between him and Sophie, the world looked gray and paltry and unengaging. He could go through the motions, but he couldn't care. And I totally get where, Emma, you're coming from with the stormfire comparison and how they continue on as a couple. And I've been trying to think about those two books and the endings and kind of the structure of the books and how they made me feel. They were both extremely harrowing.

Chels

They're both like couples that are completely at each other's throats for the entire time. I do think by the end, there are small ways where Gaffney communicates that Sophie and Connor have adjusted to each other better, which I might be holding up as more than it is, but it makes me happy to think about it this way. So, for example, the party where they thought Connor feels insulted because Sophie didn't like the outfit he was going to wear. And this sets the tone for their entire night. So in the epilog, it's noted that Sophie picks out Connor's clothes. So Connor might think she's being a little silly and snobby, but it's a concession to her because ultimately his happiness with Sophie is the most important thing to him at that point. So I feel like they kind of understand they were able to rank importance for each other at that point. I feel like that small concession kind of signaled was Gaffney's way of signaling that, oh, they're better at this now.

Beth

No, I agree. And I think I do like the Stomfire comparison because I think it also has this overarching conflict that, yes, our couple gets together at the end, but it's like those Ireland and England still don't like each other or very well, and it's not just, like, solved at the end of the book. So I kind of feel the same way with this one. Although I agree with Charles, it's a little bit more optimistic. And just like, as the couple seems more optimistic. Yeah. I still think the overarching conflict of labor is still hanging over you. So that's why it feels similar to Stormfire.

Chels

Sophie still owns the mine!

Emma

Think it is. The epilogue, he still refers to her as, like, a capitalist, and she's like, oh, I'm working on it.

Beth

This is my character flaw. I'll be working on get over my capitalism.

Chels

So let's talk about Sophie's pregnancy and miscarriage. These are both very polarizing things to happen in romance. And to top it all off, there's a third act breakup centered around Sophie's grief from the miscarriage. So how does this make you feel?

Beth

I feel like when you look at the Goodreads reviews, a lot of people are upset about this, but I don't know how you guys felt, but I kind of felt it was coming. I don't know. I wasn't surprised when it happened, I guess, is what I'm saying.

Emma

Yeah. I didn't get spoiled for what was going to happen. I don't think it's telegraphed. Sometimes it is, but I think it makes sense in the plot. I know miscarriage and pregnancy plots upset people, and it's like, if you have trauma surrounding that or you just don't want to read it, it can be upsetting. But I don't think it was handled callously. So I said in my notes that I thought I'd only read one other book where heroine has a miscarriage. During the course of this episode, I've thought of, like, four more, but the first one that I read was definitely Suddenly You by Lisa Kleypas. And that book, I really resent the way that the miscarriage is handled, and I think maybe I was just comparing this to that book. So in that book, the miscarriage, the breakup over the miscarriage, the getting back together, and then the heroine being pregnant again takes place of over maybe 20 pages. I think it may be closer to ten pages. It's very quick in the way that they deal with the miscarriage. Kleypas basically uses the miscarriage the way that she uses, like, a kidnapping in some of her other books.

Emma

Like, if you know, like a Kleypas third act kidnapping, Gaffney gives the trauma a lot more weight, and I appreciate that the problem is not solved by another pregnancy. Even in the epilogue, we don't know that Sophie is going to be pregnant again. And so I appreciated that because it's like she still gets her happily ever after without solving the problem of the miscarriage. That would be so neat. And I think it's kind of a cop out to have it totally resolved in that way. It's too tidy for Gaffney, and I'm glad that she didn't do it that way because I think the idea that you can suffer this trauma and loss and still get a happily ever after without the one to one correction of it is very meaningful. And I think this speaks to Gaffney's empathy for the situation. So I think it's handled really well. Obviously, people don't have to read this if that would be upsetting to them. But I think out of all the ways that it could be handled, it's handled very well.

Beth

I like that you said that, and I agree. I'm really glad that Sophie's not pregnant. And epilogue because sometimes I feel like with death and grief, it's very tempting for authors or filmmakers to just like, especially with kids, to be like, oh, you lost a kid, and then later on they adopt another kid or they have another kid. And it's not always framed as like, oh, here's your replacement kid, essentially, or the bomb for what you lost. But it kind of feels that way sometimes. And I think people who've gone through that kind of experience, it's not like that. It's not like you ever are like, yeah, I'm definitely over that loss that I had, or I'm not grieving anymore over that loss because I now have this other relationship that's similar to what this would have been in my life.

Chels

And did Bayley coin the term babylogue?

Beth

Yeah.

Chels

Okay. I would full credit Bayley. Okay. I said it on Twitter once, and someone's like, what's that? And I'm like, oh, is that not a term that everybody knows?

Emma

It's perfect, though. Your epilogue is just to make sure that people know that there's going to be a baby.

Beth

Which we like babylogues. I'm not trying to come for the babylogue. I

Chels

enjoy them. But also kind of like another thing. This book is published in 1996, and when people talk about the ubiquity of a baby logue, it wasn't. A lot of these older historicals don't even have epilogues. They're not going to have the required babylogue, epiloue, whatever, that you kind of get a lot more often nowadays. So it doesn't surprise me. Although you get kind of like baby logs for a sort of baby logue for Anne and Rachel, the other two heroines, they both have children, but only if you keep reading, I guess. But, yeah, the miscarriage was something that I kind of kept from y'all as a spoiler. So Beth was, like, sharing this dear author interview with Patricia Gaffney. And she talked about. They went through all of her historical romances, and I was reading it, and we were kind of, like, chatting about it. And then I got to the forever never part, and I was like, you guys, stop reading right now. Because Gaffney said in that that she wished that she hadn't killed Sophie's baby. And I understand that she feels that way, but I'm not sure how that would work because, first of all, I think the way that both Connor and Sophie react to the miscarriage is very important.

Chels

So neither of them blame each other. And I think in a lesser book, that would be the conflict. Like, someone would have a lot of anger around that. So Connor could have said that Sophie was stupid to walk home in the rain, and Sophie could have berated Connor for embarrassing her at the party and leaving her to think that she had no other choice. But that's not really how things work. That's not how life works. This is just, like, a sad, random thing that happened through a variety of factors. Like, you could just as easily blame Robert Crotty for antagonizing. Like, they're just so deep in their mutual grief that this is not even, like, an option for them. The conflict here is Sophie's retreat into herself. And this continues on for so long, it looks like there's no way to break out her out of. And Connor. Like, I think the turning point is when Jack leaves Connor. Jack is like, I'm going off to die. And Connor turns to, like, to tell her what happened and to get comfort and that she just is non responsive. And he's like, I'm just hurting you by being here.

Chels

I don't know what we're doing. I don't know what else to do because this is kind of like, another thing. There's no language around postpartum, or I don't even think you could call it postpartum, but there's no language around your mental health, around losing a baby. It's something that everybody understands is devastating, but it's not really like there's no blueprint for how Connor can react or he doesn't know what's going to happen. So even though I don't like that he made that choice, I think that is rough to read. It's just like, oh, you were going to leave her. But I think it really does kind of show. Like, these two people who are always so used to seeing the worst in each other at this moment, where they're truly at their lowest, that's not the conflict that they go for.

Emma

Yeah. And I think so the Rakes at different points in our time talking about pregnancy and historical romance have gotten in trouble for being sort of pro, being kinder to pregnant characters than some people want to be. And I think this book is a good example of why it's important to be kind to the way we talk about pregnant people. Sort of there are two threads. When people complain about pregnancy and historical romance, the idea that a baby is requisite for happily ever after, that people feel upset by that sort of promise, like they had heteronormativity, the idea that the family is only complete if they have the baby logue. And the other side of like, oh, it's traumatizing if you don't want to have children or you have trauma connected with childbirth or pregnancy, to read about characters who are pregnant, but this one, it's like, Gaffney deals with that trauma, and I think it's important to show. I think you could call it postpartum because she is postpartum even if she doesn't have a child at the end of it. Like, postpartum depression, depression associated with losing a child and Connor being at a loss.

Emma

Like, Connor doesn't have an easy solution to how to help Sophie, and Sophie doesn't have an easy solution, but they still get a happily ever after. And it's like, even if our most non reformed rakes, like didactic romance novels, should show us how to do relationships, it's like, shouldn't we show how to have a happily ever after or have a compassionate, empathetic relationship through the trauma? And it's like, if we have this hard line where we don't want to talk about pregnancy or we talk about pregnant characters derisively, then you're being derisive to this woman who has lost the child. And it's like, I imagine this could be very restorative or you get a lot of empathy for Sophie if you've gone through this, you just want the full spectrum of relationships, and nobody has to read any of these books. But I think cutting them out entirely or cutting out that plot or speaking about that plot with vitriol is really a cruel position to take. And I think reading this book really makes that very acute. I think this is like the pregnancy plot to end all pregnancy plots because it's so heart wrenching but also, I think, necessary.

Emma

I don't think I've read any books that deal. I've read books that deal with infertility in very compassionate ways, but dealing with childbirth and loss, I don't think anything beats this book.

Chels

The rake that got in trouble was me.

Beth

Emma was so kind before where I would just be like, everyone's really weird how they talk about pregnant characters. It infuriates me.

Emma

Pregnancy episode to come.

Chels

We are going to pregnancy someday episode. You don't know how I made everyone mad. Okay. So I think Forever and Ever is one of the most scathing class difference romances I've ever read. Because we're asked to reckon with a heroine that is complicit in suffering. And no matter how likable she is, Gaffney doesn't let her off the hook. What do you think differentiates Forever and Ever from other class difference historical romances?

Beth

I feel like I kind of talked about this before where it's like, I like how the class conflict obviously is like an overarching system they live in or like a class system, but then also comes from both of them. Like, individuals also perpetuate this system. And I think it kind of starts with Sophie. She has her father who tells her she can do anything a man can do. And I feel like in another book, Sophie would be this girl boss titan of industry. But Gaffney is not interested in absolving her because she's doing something like most women aren't at that time. To be fair to Sophie, she sees the mind as a connection to her father. She says later on, we were partners. It felt like a conspiracy, us against the world. When I lost him, the mind is what saved me. And I think Sophie does find a lot of satisfaction in her work. And there's this conversation later on. It's like in one of their garden days. Sophie asks Connor if he likes working in the mine, and she's surprised when he says he hates it. She pushes him and he asks her if she's ever been down the mine.

Beth

And she's only gone down at this point in the book into Gelder once. And it was kind of like a novel experience. And she's invested in the mind, so she was fascinated by the experience. And Connor can't believe her response. And he asks her to imagine going down there every day. And then he kind of just abruptly changes the subject. So at this point in the book, they have had sex, and Sophie thinks of them as themselves, as lovers. And Connor only challenges her to a point because he's getting ready to leave Wyckerley and know Sophie won't marry a minor. I recently read two rogues make a right by Cat Sebastian, and that has class as part of it. But it's not like the aristocrat character, martin, who's a baronet, thinks he's better than will as the impediment for why they can't be together. But he does feel like he has this obligation to infuse his estate with money. And so his idea he pitches to Will is like he marries someone in name only, and then they just carry on their affair, which will doesn't want to do. And that's kind of like where the class conflict rests on.

Beth

It's just kind of like one small thing that they have to kind of contend with and they can kind of make a life of it anyway. And that story works. And I like those kinds of stories. I'm not saying every story has to be like a gaffney deep dive and everyone has to be snobby, but I think there should be more stories like this because we do currently, with all our regency romances, there's tons of aristocrats, and at the time, the upper classes genuinely believed they deserved their money, deserve their station, thought they were better than other people. And I want that reflected in the stories that I read because I think it's interesting. I think it's interesting to read about. And I think it's a great character arc that a character can go through.

Chels

Yeah, that's how you get, like Sebastian in book two. Right? Like, Sebastian legitimately thinks that he has the right to do whatever he wants. He's not a benevolent landowner. He's the worst person you can meet in your life.

Emma

He's not tricked himself into not thinking that. He agrees. He's like, I'm the worst.

Chels

Yeah. He's like, everybody is my plaything. He joins the magistrate because he's drunk, and then he still goes because he's like, oh, maybe I'll get some interesting stories to share with my terrible friends. He doesn't see everybody else as human beings, and I think that's something that I miss. I feel like you get a lot more from people talk about how older historicals are meaner and they are meaner. But I also like the rose colored glasses about the aristocracy are not really, like. So, like, Gaffney has this other book called Lily, and that book is wild, by the way. And the hero of that book is, like, literally the worst man, the only hero that I've ever been. Like, if he fell off a cliff at the end of the book, I would have been like, sure, it would have been fine. But he's just, like, the nastiest aristocrat. And a big part of the conflict is that the heroine is pretending to be. She's, like, a hidden aristocrat. She's pretending to be a scullery maid, or she is actually a scholarly maid while she's in hiding. And a lot of the conflicts are just like, how he makes her life so much harder, because he's like, yeah, sure, come up and tend to me by yourself.

Chels

And Lily's like, all the other servants are going to annihilate me if you single me out. And he's like, I don't care. I think that's such a more, like, I want to say honest. It feels less troubling to me. It feels more interesting to kind of explore these real feelings. And then also, instead of just having someone be a benevolent landowner or be, like, a benevolent mine owner, which Sophie, I think, kind of like, she comes around. Like, she starts to do all of this, but she does do it because of Connor. I don't think this is something that she would have come to on her own.

Beth

I feel like when you have someone who is maybe, like, a nicer aristocrat, I think something has to happen to them that makes them different. Like that book I just referenced Two Rogues make a Right. Martin is, like, chronically ill, so I think he just sees the world differently than another aristocrat would. Or, again, going to get Sebastian Rake of a Rake. Courtenay is kind of otherized by his whole family, and he's traveled the world. It just kind of had the opportunity to pull himself away from that world. So I think a character has to have that kind of experience for me to be like, yeah, I can see why they're not terrible. Yeah.

Chels

And Martin in Two rogues make a Right. I think that's, like, the last book in the trilogy. And in the first two books, he did something really awful, didn't he? Like, yeah,

Beth

I think he raised the rent on his tenants so much that.

Chels

They had to leave or something. Like. Like, it was something really unflattering. That doesn't happen that often in historicals because they're just like, oh, they're good landowners.

Beth

They bring bread sometimes.

Emma

What's the current buns?

Chels

The current buns, lady Bountiful.

Emma

I'm so tired of dukes. I'm so tired of dukes who don't act like dukes. Like, if you're going to write a duke, he needs to be a dick at this point. Honestly, there's so many new Duke books coming out recently. But when I was thinking about class in this book, the thing that I thought about the most was the film The Philadelphia Story, which I connect that movie with Emma a lot because it's also a movie that everyone sort of ends up with the right class. Like, Katharine Hepburn's character thinks she wants to marry, like a working class upstart, and her ex husband is like her neighbor Cary Grant, who was also very wealthy in Philadelphia. And then she ends up remarrying her ex husband. She thinks that she's doing something noble by marrying the new money upstart, and this is going to correct her thing, but she actually returns to the upper class. But it's romantic. But in that movie, there's the Jimmy Stewart character, who's the journalist who thinks that Katharine Hepburn's going to be a snob. And he's, like, investigating her marriage and her wedding, and they sort of come together. And this book reminded me of if people often shift those characters, they want Katharine Hepburn to end up with Jimmy.

Beth

I was going to say I was Team Jimmy Stewart, but keep going.

Emma

They have so much chemistry in the movie, it's absurd. But I was like, oh, this book is like if Katharine Hepburn and Jimmy Stewart ended up together in The Philadelphia Story. But they have this great conversation about class and they both recognize that they're both snobs. Katharine Hepburn, she calls Jimmy Stewart an intellectual snob, which I think is kind of how Connor is. He looks down on people who don't understand his worldview. And so that Sophie hasn't picked up all the politics of Connor immediately he is looking down at her. It's like, how can she not see this? And I think he also looks down a little bit on the miners who aren't immediately moved to action. It's like, why can't these people free themselves from the chains? And it's like they're just living their lives. But I think the politics of that movie, again, I connect strongly with Emma, but you can be snobbish outside of just class. But it's always informed by class, like, that you have all this baggage and this perception of people that often can just, like, you have to meet people where they are and take them for who they are.

Emma

But that was my class analysis of related to this book was I just was like, oh, this is just like George Cukor, Philadelphia story.

Beth

We need a movie reference every episode. I know because I want to compile a list at the end of the year and be like, these are the recommendations for what you need to watch.

Emma

I think my accompanying newsletter for this episode will be about Philadelphia story because I've been meaning to write about it for a few months because it's so good, though I am team Cary Grant, because I can't not be team Cary Grant. He's just too perfect.

Beth

He is great.

Chels

So we've talked before about how the Wyckerley trilogy deals with three different sects of power and provincial Victorian life. So book one is God, two is prison, and this book is labor. How successful do you think Gaffney was in grappling with these huge concepts? And why do you think she chose the Gelder mine as the backdrop for her final story?

Emma

So I said this earlier, I do think it makes sense for the mine to be last because it's what the community is centered around. I think this is the most community driven of the think, because Anne and Christie's relationship happens in secret, and so they're kind of hiding their relationship. And then we also get the diaries. So structurally, we're dealing a lot of with Anne's internal thoughts and then into having to hold with Rachel and Sebastian. So much of their relationship is happening at the house because she's like, his is. Even though we're meeting people from the community throughout those first two books, this one is like so much of their relationship happens outdoors at public events, we are very aware. And at the mine, the mine is also like a public scene for them to interact at, even though they have that honeymoon phase in the garden. It's very much about the community, and so it sort of suddenly looks outward in a way the other two books don't. So I think that makes sense. And then it's like, oh, what's really at the center of everything? What's at the center of God and prison?

Emma

It's all about labor, essentially. It's a very capital, as in Karl Marx way of looking at the world, which it's the thread throughout the whole book, the whole series, it ties together. It's like, what's the answer is like, capital, and labor is the answer to the other sort of questions that are raised in the other two books.

Beth

Feel like Sophie cracks a joke, like, maybe Karl Marx has a sister or something like that in the book.

Beth

I like what you said, that this book is much more about community. And I think that's why I feel like for stories like landing a gut punch, having to hold, and Forever and Ever are kind of, like, on the same level, but it's dependent on your reader experience, which is so interesting. I think Forever and Ever stands on its own. For sure. You could just read it and it would be fine. But because it's, like, your investment in the community and you've been seeing it all this time, I think it just hits so much harder.

Chels

Yeah. And I was thinking, too, about kind of like, how Emma, you said it makes sense for the mind to be last, because if you remember, at the very beginning of the first book, Christie saves Trantor Fox from the mine. Trantor Fox is also a huge character in the third book because he's, like, Connor's partner. And then also kind of, like, christie's relationship with the mine is also called into question. So, like, Connor has the Radamanthus society. He writes that preliminary report, and then they take it and embellish it, he said, and kind of made it seem like, a little bit worse than what he had initially written. And one of the things that they do is they implicate Christie, saying, like, the vicar isn't doing anything to help. And everyone's like, well, Christy's great. Don't say anything bad about. But, like, I was kind of thinking about that, too, because nothing that they said that the Radamanthus society embellished was really actually untrue. I guess it's maybe the embellishment, like, the malicious intent, because Christy is literally the nicest guy ever in the world. But he's also proud of Sophie. He's like, Sophie's our mine owner.

Chels

She's great, blah, blah, blah. He doesn't think that there's a problem with the mine or that the conditions in the mine are bad, which most people in Wyckerley don't think that, because they don't spend any time there or significant time, or they don't know what it's like to work there. So I think that it is true. It's like something that you have kind of seen throughout the books, but also just kind of like, if we're going to see Sophie kind of as a person who's complicit in this, I think Christie is a person in all the books who I think I've kind of complained that he's flawless. There's a little bit less conflict around his character because he's so good and so perfect. But if he was truly, truly perfect, he would be like, this is a labor violation or something, but it's just like how the world of the time worked. If someone as kind as Christy can do this, Sophie knowing her flaws, like, she's a snob, she's self absorbed, she likes her clothes, but of course, she can do it as well. And I feel like, too. One thing I guess I kind of want to get to before we wrap up too much is that Emma said this earlier, that Gaffney is not coming wholeheartedly down on Connor's side.

Chels

And we haven't really talked about the good things about Sophie, but Sophie is incredibly charming. Sophie is a very fun and gregarious. And then there's also kind of, like, some of my favorite moments between her and Connor are when Connor will be like, where did you hear that? And Sophie would just be like, from my uncle. And then they would laugh because they would see how silly it was that she just kind of repeats things. She's trying so hard to sound knowledgeable, but admit. But she's so prideful. She wants to seem like she's in charge. But the way that she lowers her guard around Connor and is able to tell him, like, yeah, I just said that. I don't know what I'm talking about. It was just so charming. Yeah.

Emma

And I think Connor sees her charm as, like, a utility. He's not been in the position where he's needed to be charming. It's like he needs to only ingratiate himself with minors. But it's like the moment you enter politics. This comes up frequently in political marriages. In historical romance, the heroine has to teach the hero how to have a dinner party. And it's like, yeah, if you're in parliament, you need to be nice to people and not initially go guns ablazing.

Chels

So bad at that.

Beth

Right.

Emma

It's like, if you want to be a radical, you need to be, like, blowing things up. But if you want to be in parliament, like, you need to be polite at dinner parties. I'm a little surprised that Connor never tells Christy that religion is opiate of the masses. I would love if someone confronted Christy and was like, your church is aiding and abetting labor violations. Because people, they go to the penny readings at the church and they have the parties, and Anne is so fun. Yeah. It's like, the church does assuage some of the anxiety about the economic anxiety in the town. And, yeah, Connor, I guess it's like, also, that's the nature of politics, is that when you're in theory, things are easy and you have these black and white lines. But then when Connor meets Christy, he's like, yeah, Christy's really kind to the people in this community, so I don't want to say something bad about Christy in the report, even though Christy's behavior does sort of try to absolve some of the issues in the. Yeah, like, once things get applied, they're real people are stakes. And the miners get like, it's also their community.

Emma

Like, the miners who Connor's defending also view Christy and Sophie as part of their wiggly space. And Connor is this interloper, but it has to be wholesale. You can't just come in and blow everything up.

Chels

Yeah, I liked kind of what you were talking about, about what Sophie brings to a political marriage, I think, too. I just keep coming back to that scene where she's just like, I hate your outfit. I hate your outfit so much. And he's just like, he uses that one little criticism. It just kind of ruins his whole night. He can't take the baiting from Crotty and the small criticism from Sophie, and everything just blows up into this huge confrontation. So that's something that he's going to need to learn how to deal with if he's going to do this regularly. And then also kind of like the end of that arc, like him actually getting this position. Nolton coming around is because of Sophie, because he sees the way that Connor and Sophie love each other, and it reminds him of his relationship with his wife, which I know is very like, okay, yeah, you wouldn't like a single guy, but no, Connor on his own couldn't do. He's not just because Connor needs to be married, but also Connor has no experience kind of like, tempering his reactions in a way that is going to be absolutely necessary to him.

Chels

And I think Sophie's a good way to test him for that because his initial negative reactions are usually when he and Sophie are starting to get into.

Emma

A fight, he also needs buy into when he's running for the parliament. It's like, why would he run in this district? It's like, well, if he's married to Sophie, he's vested in this district. So it's like, even on a practical level, he needs that relationship to represent this community in parliament.

Chels

Absolutely. I guess so for the last three books, just kind of like talking about all the Wyckerley books, I'm going to leave this kind of open ended so we can talk about how they're in communication with each other, but we can also talk about the side characters of Wyckerley because a lot of them had plot points that were very neatly wrapped up. So, for example, you've got Trantor Fox in the mine. Holyoke, who is the bailiff at Sebastian and Rachel's estate. Jack. And you've got Miss Wheedy, who finally gets married in this that you all. Anything that sticks out to you, anything that you want to talk about here.

Emma

I'm so happy for Miss Wheedy. I love her.

Chels

Oh, my God.

Emma

I wish I could read her romance novel.

Chels

I know. I bet it would be. So her romance novel would be a Mary Balogh.

Emma

Yeah. Nothing would happen. And they just would get married going between people's houses.

Chels

It seems like he proposed wrong. That's a very Balogh thing because it was Captain Carnock. He wanted Miss Wheedy to marry him, but her mother is still alive and is also doing very, very poorly. And so Miss Wheatie is like, she turns down the proposal because the initial proposal did not involve a space for her mom. And so she's like, I can't do this. And then he amends a proposal like, no, I'm including your mom now. I'm including. And she's like, no, I don't want to put you through that. You don't want to do this. It's a very Mary Balogh situation. I feel like it is.

Emma

The whole plot is like getting the proposal. She literally has a book that is called the proposal that is like that plot.

Chels

But, yeah, they're happily married in the first book. And I love, too, Captain Carnock. You find out the way that he is in all three. So, like, you're introduced to him as her love interest in the first book. The second book, he's, like, on the magistrate, which is like, a step up for him. He's very excited to be on the magistrate. He's on the magistrate with Sebastian and Mayor Vanstone. And then in the third book, you find out he's a Tory, but he's also married to miss Wheedy. He's a Tory, but apparently a lot of, like, Crotty was a Tory who's pretending to be a Whig just so he could get a seat.

Emma

Tories and wigs, they're not really that supremacy. I've been reading about this.

Beth

Whigs could also be they're really Tories.

Chels

That was something that Connor thought. He was just like, well, I like Carnock because he just says he's a Tory. Everybody else is acting like they aren't.

Beth

I don't know if I have much to add other than I just love Jack and Connor's relationship. I feel like sometimes the side characters kind of feel I'm okay with them serving a function like being flat characters. But I don't know. Jack is just so charming and likable and you just.

Emma

I know. I want him to have a book. I know this book. Gaffney hasn't written a book in 15 years and these books came out in the 90s. But it's like, I would read, like, Jack as invalid husband because he's, like, on the mend. So he gives up his romance with Sidony. So she's pursued by Holyoke or an earlier series and then she falls in love with Jack. And then Jack. Part of Jack's arc is like, to sort of give up Sidney so that she can happily marry Holyoke. Even though he's, like, recuperating. He's like, oh, I wouldn't be able to provide for her working class, which is very sweet, but I would read Jack as invalid husband to someone. He needs to find a rich wife who can just like, charming.

Beth

Yeah, just a rich widow or something. I don't even know. But I just want him to happily ever after.

Chels

Jack was so fun. I loved him. I could absolutely see. And he definitely has this older brother. He has this kind of carefree older brother. You would think that an older brother would be like, I'm in charge and I'm more serious. But a lot of times, in actuality, they're just kind of like the weirdos. He was just kind of, like, doing. You don't know how old Jack is in relationship with Connor's deceased brother. So it's very possible that he's, like the third or something, but he's older than the. And that's kind of like some of the tension of that. The caretaker switches. I can absolutely see Connor looking up to because Connor is pretty tightly wound. Connor isn't really like a ladies man. So like a young Connor, I could see his older brother Jack just, like, having fun, making friends with literally everybody he meets. Just like seeking out the joy in life. Even though Jack obviously has a harder life because he is working in a mine and Connor just being like, wow, he's got it all figured out. And then Jack, of course, gets sick and then everything goes to hell.

Emma

Yeah. I think I said this before we started recording, but it's interesting to see that older brother, younger brother dynamic that we see in so much historical romance where normally in a landed gentry or aristocratic novel, Jack would be, like, the titled one and Connor would have the chip on his shoulder about that. But the way that the class dynamic, it sort of becomes reversed because it's like, Connor can go to school because when he's younger and so there's more people working by the time he's ready to go to school. So it's like he actually gets elevated in this way. But the personalities of older brother and younger brother still play out where Jack is the one things go right for. And Connor has sort of anxiety about his place in the world. But even though he's sort of also being put into this middle class position that second brothers often do, but in reverse with the aristocracy, but it still plays out similarly in their personalities.

Chels

Okay, final thoughts on the Wyckerley trilogy. These books rock.

Emma

They're so good.

Beth

It's mandatory reading for any historical romance reader.

Chels

It's absolutely insane that every single one of them is that good.

Emma

Yeah, I don't know how you wouldn't like all of them. I know the second one's a bodice ripper and this one deals with pretty acute trauma, but I think if you like one, you're going to like all three of them. So it's like if you like one, you're going to have like three books that you love, which is awesome.

Chels

Everybody, please go read the Wyckerley trilogy if you haven't already. Hopefully we have convinced you by this point. We think they are so good. Thank you so much for listening to reformed rakes. If you enjoy the podcast, you can find bonus content on our patreon@patreon.com slash reformedrakes. You can also follow us on Twitter and Instagram for show updates. The username for both is at reformedrakes. Please rate and review us on your podcast platform of choice. It helps a lot. Thank you again and we'll see you next time.

Beth

Hi, this is Beth. During the editing process, we're actually going to take a bit of a break in January, so if you're a patron, you'll still get a bonus episode, but our regular episodes will kind of be on hold. We've got some big episodes planned. We're excited for you guys to hear them. And we'll be back at the beginning of February.