In Bed with the Devil
Show Notes
In Bed with the Devil by Lorraine Heath is the first in the Scoundrels of St. James series. The series is Oliver Twist fanfiction, as it follows Fagin’s crew of child thieves as grown ups. The first book features Lucian Langdon, referred to as the devil earl as it’s common knowledge he murdered his supposed uncle. I say supposed, because Luke was adopted by the Earl of Clayborne. This earl is the father of the man who Luke killed. Because of Luke’s silver eyes, the earl believes him to be his long lost grandson who disappeared as a child. Luke struggles to believe he’s really his grandson, but says the right things to become adopted. The romance is between him and Catherine, the daughter of a duke. She’s looking for someone to murder on her behalf. She chooses Luke for his reputation and refuses to say who it is until he agrees to it and the time is right.
Books Mentioned
Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens
Bleak House by Charles Dickens
Little Dorrit by Charles Dickens
The Earl Takes All by Lorraine Heath
Lord of Scoundrels by Loretta Chase
Scoundrels of St. James series by Lorraine Heath
Works Cited
Transcript
Beth
Welcome to Reformed Rakes, a historical romance podcast that doesn't particularly care if you are the Earl's biological grandson.
My name is Beth, and I write at the Substack Ministrations.
Emma
I'm Emma, a law Librarian, writing about justice and romance at the Substack Restorative Romance.
Beth
Lorraine Heath, first published in 1994, with Sweet Lullaby. She followed this up with her Texas trilogy series that features three brothers, each named for a city in Texas, from the years 1876 to 1887. While Heath starts in America, she has, for most of her career, written stories set in Victorian in England.
This runs opposite to the trajectory of her life as someone born in Hartfordshire, England, but who grew up in Texas. She credits her degree in psychology with creating believable characters. She made the jump to writing after working for the IRS, writing technical manuals and computer code.
In Bed with the Devil is the first in the Scoundrels of St. James series. This series is all Oliver Twist fan fiction. As it follows Fagin's crew of child thief as grownups. Lucian Langdon is the first hero who is referred to as the Devil Earl, as its common knowledge he murdered his supposed uncle. I say supposed because Luke was adopted by the Earl of Claybourne. This Earl is the father of the man who Luke killed. Because of Luke's silver eyes, the earl believes him to be his long lost grandson who disappeared as a child. Luke struggles to believe he's really his grandson, but says the right things to become adopted.
The romance is between him and Catherine, the daughter of a Duke. She's looking for someone to murder on her behalf. She chooses Luke for his reputation and refuses to say who it is until he agrees to it, and the time is right.
Okay, first off, shout out to our patrons. We did a poll on Patreon asking... Of four authors who are pillars in current romance, we wanted to do one of their books. I did not preface this poll, which I probably should have, being like, We have not read these authors really for a reason. We don't.
Emma
There were authors that I think between the two of us, one of us had read at least one of their books. Julie Anne Long, Julia Quinn, Loraine Heath, and the fourth one was Eloisa James. And so between the two of us, I think I've read at least one book by all of them before. I don't know if you had, but the subtext of the poll was that there was a reason that we had not covered these authors at any point in our three seasons' on Reformed Rakes.
Beth
But to be fair, I did compare it to our Elizabeth Hoyt episode, and we were much more charmed by Elizabeth Hoyt. And I think there's some compelling things in her writing. And we wanted to approach this in good faith.
Emma
We went- Yes, we went into the Elizabeth Hoyt book with me as a fan one of her as a consistent presence in my romance reading, even if I never... I've never read a book by Elizabeth Hoyt that I thought was a five-star book. And so we were like, We're just going to try this with another author that we have dabbled in but not explored in-depth.
Beth
Right. And you and I have both read the Gorilla Twins book. That book is a book. And then Julie Anne Long... I have read one book based on a recommendation from Chels, and the chemistry in that book is good. I think I rated it like three stars. I think it was just probably needed to be edited down.
Emma
Yeah. And we covered her in our Newgate episode, and she wrote one of what I think of the worst Newgate books, which colors my opinion of her. But again, there have been books of hers that I've enjoyed. There have been books of hers that I've DNFed.
Beth
We also didn't notice that Julie Anne Long and Lorraine Heath eventually were matching in votes because we picked Lorraine Heath, and then Chels was like, Did you know that they were equal? And we're like, Oh, no, we could have had a better reading experience.
Emma
If you had gotten from our equivocating so far, we both hated this book in no uncertain terms. We're going to not try pull punches, but this is a book that both of us hated. I think Beth maybe only finished it because we're doing the episode on it. I finished it because it turned into a full on hate read to the point where I continue to read the series because I hated it so much, which is not an impulse that I often have.
Beth
No, we're not really hate readers. I feel like if I am compelled to finish something, I'm like, there's a reason for it.
Emma
There's a reason that you're interested in it.
Beth
But I'm doing a podcast episode on it, so that was my reason, or else I probably would have DNFed it. I appreciate Charles Dickens, but I'm not the super fan the way Emma is, so I don't think it got me in the gut the way for you.
Emma
Yes. So in our... I saw one of my Goodreads that Beth put on her Instagram stories is that during our Sarah Waters episode, Fingersmith, on the episode, I talked a lot. I was like, Oh, I wish that more people reference Charles Dickens in Victorian novels, the way they do with Jane Austen, because it actually would be totally appropriate for Dickens to appear in these novels because
Beth
He was so popular!
Emma
He was so popular. So popular. It's weird that nobody ever reads Dickens in Victoria novels. People do it with Jane Austen in a way that is often ahistorical, but it's like everyone read Dickens. It's like he is super, super famous. I felt like, in my good reason for you, I said, I feel the monkey's paw collapsing around my heart of my request for more Dickens in novels because there couldn't be more Dickens in this book in a worse way. I will get to my problems with how she uses Dickens in this book and the series. And that's going to be one of my rants on the episode.
Beth
I hope our listeners enjoy this, this rare side of us. I can't imagine we'll do something like this again in the future. I don't know. I would like to continue with pillars in Romance, again, but we want to approach in good faith. That person's best book, why is this appealing? I don't really believe in guilty pleasure. I think if there's something that is drawing you to it, that something is working in this piece of art. So we will do a plot summary. For the past few episodes, I keep saying that they're getting shorter, which is actually not true. They've probably stayed the same length, but this one is legitimately shorter because they just couldn't. So please enjoy this crazy little book.
Catherine exchanges a look with Luke Langdon, the devil earl, at a ball when she is 17. This starts something of an obsession for her as she continues to invite him to parties to which he never comes. The gossip around Luke is that he killed his uncle as a teen and while awaiting trial, met his grandfather, who recognized him as his long lost grandson. Luke himself and society at large do not believe that he is actually his grandfather's biological grandchild. Luke heads to Dodger's drawing room, a gaming hell, and meets with his childhood friend, Frannie. He intends to marry Frannie, but decides to ask her another time and heads home to bed.
A servant awakens him, saying a lady is here to see him. It is Catherine, and at first, Luke kisses her, assuming she's there for a liaison, but actually she wants him to murder someone for her. She offers payment and won't give any details. As an Earl, Luke says he has no need of money. Catherine leaves.
The next day or so, Catherine meets up with her friend, Winne, the Duchess of Avendale. We quickly learn Winnie is in an abusive relationship. Catherine tells Winnie to leave him and go to her father's house. Winnie says her husband will find her and kill her. Again, Luke talks with Frannie, and this time manages to propose. She declines, saying her origins aren't good enough, and then says she doesn't want to be an earl's wife. She says to Luke, “Please don’t ask me to step into your world. The very thought of it terrifies me. It would be such a lonely place.” Luke asks Catherine to meet him at midnight. He agrees to murder this unknown person if Catherine will teach Frannie how to be an earl's wife, saying he doesn't want his children whispered about as he is. Catherine responds, , “‘You are not whispered about, my lord. People do not speak of the devil."
The lessons start immediately, so Luke takes Catherine to Dodger's drawing room. Luke asks his friend, Jim Swindler, to look into Catherine, and when Jack Dodger expresses an interest in Catherine, Luke tells Catherine to be wary of him. Catherine and Frannie have their lesson. Afterwards, Luke asks if a man has forced his attention on Catherine, and if that's the target. He says if that's the case, then he'll do it without condition and take care of it that night. Catherine says that's not the case. Even though she can get what she wants if she just says yes.
Catherine and Luke spend more time together. We see more of the Duke treating Winnie badly and telling Catherine that she's a bad influence on his wife. At one point, thieves attack Catherine and Luke, and in the scramble, Catherine defends Luke and injures her hand. This leads to a scene where Luke kiss her to distract her from the pain while Dr. Bill Graves stitches her up.
Luke discovers someone else is following Catherine around in addition to the person he has following her. Catherine hosts a dinner for Frannie to practice being in society. It doesn't go the way Catherine wants. Her midnight lessons with Frannie make her tired, and she's on edge the entire dinner. She leaves and cries, and Luke misses her. Catherine protests as Frannie is down the hall, and Luke says he loves Frannie but really finds Catherine attractive. Catherine suggests he take Frannie on a date. Later on, Luke asks Jack as in the Artful Dodger, if this hasn't been obvious yet. If Jack remembers if Luke said anything the night Jack found Luke, Jack says no, and that he shouldn't think he's really a Claybourne.
The next day, Catherine and Winnie run into Luke and Frannie at the great exhibition. This serves for Catherine to see him in a new light, in the sunshine. That's from the book. And Luke doubling down in that Catherine is outside of his grasp. A week later, when he throws a ball that Catherine helped with planning, Luke shows up and dances with Catherine. As they dance, Luke remarks Catherine reminds him of his grandfather because he also could never figure out what his grandfather saw in Luke, the way that Catherine see something in Luke. Catherine responds, he saw his grandson. Luke leaves and goes to Dodgers. He tells Frannie he's preparing the way for them to be in society, and they dance together. Luke doesn't feel passionate for Frannie the way that he does for Catherine. Jack interrupts Luke and Frannie, saying they found the man following Catherine.
They interrogate him. The man owns up to being one of the thief that attacked him and Catherine that night, and their instructions were to kill them. Luke gets a note from Catherine to bring a doctor and to come to Avendale's immediately. Bill stitches up an injured Winnie, whose husband was displeased about the appearance of Luke at the ball. Catherine feels responsible since she invited Luke and says that the Duke of Avendale has killed two of his previous wives, and she fears for Winnie.
I don't think I've said yet who Catherine wants Luke to murder, but it's the Duke of Avendale because he's abusing Winnie.
Their plan is to have Luke, Winnie, and Catherine travel to Luke's estate to trick Avendale, thinking that his wife is at this estate. Instead, they drop Winnie and her son with Frannie and Bill and keep up the pretense that Winnie is with them as they travel. They make it to Luke's estate, and while they wait for Avendale to arrive in the following days, they have sex several times. Luke reveals why he killed his supposed uncle because this uncle raped Frannie when she was twelve. Avendale does come later and fights Luke, and in the scuffle, sets the room on fire. Luke grabs Catherine and goes to a secret passageway to escape. Luke says he doesn't know where it goes, only that it is safe. They tie up Avendale and take him with them. After waking the following morning, Luke says he remembers his life before the streets. His mother told him about that passage, and thus he truly is the biological grandson of the Earl of Claybourne. As a child, Jack spoke with Luke's parents on the street saying he needed help, but when they ran to the corner, they faced Luke's uncle, who killed his parents so he could inherit the Earldom them.
They head back to London. Luke confronts Jack and their friendship suffers. Luke then meets with Frannie and Bill to discuss how to get rid of Avendale. They plan to fake the Duke's death with a body that Bill grabs from a cemetery somewhere. And Frannie forges some papers so they can put the actual Duke on a prison hulk to Australia. A month later, Catherine discovers she is pregnant. Luke realizes he loves Catherine and tells Frannie, who already knows. He goes with her blessing to propose to Catherine. He does not realize she is pregnant. During the wedding ceremony, we learn that Luke's middle name is Oliver.
I did want to start off with something maybe we liked. I didn't I was how short both our answers would be. I was working on this halfway through reading the book. So yeah, any little tiny thing you liked.
Emma
Okay, so I did... There was a character in the book that I liked. So there's a hot doctor who's one of the orphans who's raised, he's the hot doctor friend. And he's the hero that I frequently gravitate towards in series, where it's like, I often like the second fiddle who's pragmatic and has a deep dark secret. It's like the cousin West of Lisa Kleypas' world. I like the guy who's in the third or fourth book. That's often in the first book of a series, I can tell who's going to be the last guy who gets his romance. And he does get the last romance in the series. His romance, honestly, in the novel, The Hot Doctor, his name is Bill. William, I can't remember his last name. He's not noble. What is it? Bill Graves. William Graves. Because he's a grave robber. He becomes a doctor. I like that professional man because there's not a lot of work in this book, and so I like seeing him doctoring. I like his romance, honestly, in the last book a lot. However, it is sidelined by an incredibly, I find, stupid revenge plot that it doesn't even have to do with really him.
It has to do with the character who is murdered, but not actually murdered, in this book, that guy comes back in the last series of the novella.
Beth
The Duke comes back?
Emma
Yeah, the Duke comes back from Australia to exert revenge on Winnie, who is Bill's romantic partner. And Bill knows that the Duke is not dead because he helps commit the fraud.
Beth
Oh, I thought that was going to happen. Oh, not that he would... I thought Winnie and Bill were going to end up together because she like, hangs out with him while the other two...
Emma
And he takes care of her after the abuse. And That's a dynamic I like in Lisa Kleypas, like this person who has a professional relationship with someone who is intimate but also would be inappropriate. And so I like that forbidden relationship. So I liked their romance, but the plot, the the betrayal of the friends keeping from Winnie, that the husband is back because they basically gaslight her. She starts feeling like... She's like, I keep seeing him over and over again. And I know he's dead. This is me going crazy because this abuse, and I feel guilty because I'm now having an affair with Bill. But it's all of her friends who committed the fraud, and also Bill, in some part, keep this from her. And that really made me very mad. Mad also because it's a novella that I don't feel like... I think it's something that could happen, but I think there needs to be a much bigger fallout from the gaslighting that they do to Winnie, because I think it is a very, very cruel thing to do this battered woman. Lorraine Heath wrote that book much later than the rest of the series.
I don't know if she just her contract worked out where she didn't have the fifth book in line. She returns to it before she writes the sequels to these books, because Winnie and Bill's child is one of the hero... Or not their child, Winnie's first son with the Duke is the hero of one of the later books in the series, who was raised by Bill and Winnie. So I liked the romance for the first half. And then once he starts gaslighting her, again, I felt... It could have been a good book, but the fact that it was the novella in shorter, I didn't like. But in this book, I did like Bill. I thought he was hot.
Beth
Yeah, he's a good character. I liked when Frannie didn't want to be an Earl's wife. This ends up being stupid and part of the conflict. But the initial when I was reading it, and she was just like, That is not my world. I do not want this. And I was like, Yes, that's a breath of fresh air. This is like a... This response makes- Yes, we're always asking for this. This response makes a lot of sense. You know what I mean? Because, again, we don't talk about how famous... If you were a duke or an earl, were kings.
Emma
There's a lot of attention on her. There's a lot of attention on her. And also, she just doesn't want to raise her children in the world. She's very maternal. This is what we're told about, Frannie, all the time. She's not super interested in raising. She's seen the ostracization of Luke becoming an Earl. And I think Luke and her both see, if Frannie doesn't get her act together, their children will be ostracized. And I think that's a big part of her, too. She's like, I don't want my children to be in the circumstances that Luke is in. Though, again, Lorraine Heath It's undercuts this because in the third book, Frannie marries a Duke. Yeah.
Beth
Yeah. But for a brief window, it could have been something really interesting. And just the first hurdle in their conflict, instead of being so drawn out, where he cannot recontextualize his love for Frannie as being like, Oh, this is just someone who's important to me. I'm not actually attracted to her and want her to be my wife. Do you know what I mean? But that's really drawn out way too long. Okay, so As we... So I just literally put the script, Emma, rant here about how Lorraine Heath incorporates Dickens into this series. So we're just going to let Emma run for a little bit.
Emma
So listeners may feel like I'm being a little bit hyperbolic about this, but I firmly believe that the way Lorraine Heath uses Dickens and invokes Oliver Twist in this series is unethical. I think it is... She has breached some moral code of mine, and this is how she invokes Oliver Twist. And so I'm going to try and pitch you on why I think this is bad. So I did not realize when we picked up this book that it was going to be Oliver Twist fan fiction. We read a couple of the summaries when we were like, okay, this one has a lot of reviews on good read.
Beth
It's not mentioned in the summary. No, it's not mentioned in the summary.
Emma
I think if we had read the summary of the second book, which Jack Dodger, the Artful Dodger is, but we didn't read that one. So we're like, okay, orphans become grownups, whatever. So it's Oliver Twist fan fiction. So like Beth said, I really love Dickens. Like Bleak House and Great Explanations are two of my favorite books of all time, and A Tale of Two Cities is not far behind. So I talked about how I asked for more Dickens references in Victorian novels.
I just think if you're setting a book in the Victorian period, you should reference Dickens. If people are reading books, they're likely reading Dickens. Oliver Twist, specifically, which is not my favorite Dickens, but is very important in the scope of the creation of the Victorian novel, because it's often considered the first Victorian novel. And it comes out of this trend of pulpy fiction to have books involving Newgate in some way, which we cover in our Newgate episode. There's this whole history in the early Victorian period, the 1830s, of these pulpy books about criminals where someone ends up in Newgate or escapes from Newgate. Oliver Twist is just the one that still read because Dickens became famous afterwards. So we think of it as the weighty tome people think of Dickens as really heavy or dark. But Oliver Twist is genre fiction. And it's also incredibly funny. The sad orphan books that come late... Like, Little Dorrit, I think, is the one that is incredibly bleak and very, very sad. Oliver Twist, while it shows realities of being poor, is also very, very humorous. So the book was published as a serial between 1837 and 1839.
So this is over the period when Victoria becomes queen. And so that's why it's considered the Victorian novel, because it's being published while she becomes queen, and she read it. So I assume everyone knows the plot of Oliver Twist, but with a thousand-foot view of it, Oliver Twist is an orphan in a poor house in the suburbs of London, and that's important in the suburbs. We see him abused there, and then he's sent to an apprentice as an undertaker. So that's the scene where he says, Please, sir, I want some more. As punishment, he gets sent to be an apprentice at an undertaker. From there, he escapes to London because the undertaker scares him and abuses him. There, he meets one of literature's great characters, Artful Dodger, who's a pickpocket child in a man named Fagin's crew of children pickpockets. After a series of mishaps and adventures that are very comical in these characters and building out this world, they lead to a middle-class man recognizing Oliver as the child of his close friend and his close friend's mistress, who he intended to marry, both of whom have passed away. Fagin is worried about Oliver revealing the details of his criminal enterprise, and then makes moves to get him back, but then everything unravels.
Fagin ends up in Newgate, and that is what makes it a Newgate novel, and then Oliver is adopted by Brownlow, who's the friend of his father. What Heath does in this book is take the Oliver Twist series and basically removes all of the interesting political teeth to it. Luke is supposed to be Oliver Twist. That's pretty clear for a few points in the series, and there's something that happens at the end that makes it... His middle name is Oliver and Catherine is-
Beth
Yeah, I say it in a plot summary.
Emma
Yeah, okay. His story is that he murdered someone, and while at Newgate, so in this, in he's book, Luke, the child who's incarcerated at Newgate, the man's father of his murder victim, an earl comes to see him. The earl recognizes Luke as his missing grandson, of his late other son adopts him and puts him in line to inherit the earldom. So a lot of these things are shifted towards the aristocracy away from Dickens' plot. Luke is racked with guilt above the murder he committed, even though he had a very good reason to do it.
So I think already we're getting into an irresponsible use of Dickens class politics. I think it's really important in Dickens that none of these people are ennobled, none of them are the aristocracy. The people who are being condemned are people who have a middle class level of wealth, like the circumstances that lead to Oliver to being an orphan, the circumstances that made his mother feel like she couldn't have a child out of wedlock. Those Victorian notions are what's being condemned here, and it's very middle class notions. I have more thoughts about that later. But I think the way that Heath uses the characters makes no sense. And this is one of the reasons I kept reading the books, even though I was having such a bad time with them, because I had to figure out what she was doing with them, because the universes didn't make sense. So in this book, she makes it clear that both Dickens and Oliver Twist are things that exist in the world of book. And the implication is that Luke and the Gang were the inspiration for this book, this Victorian novel, Oliver Twist. But this is a wildly popular book in the Victorian period, and nobody seemingly in the universe thinks to connect the Jack Dodger, who wears flamboyant clothes, with Jack Dawkins, the Artful Dodger.
Jack Dodger is his name in Loraine Heath's book. But nobody's like, Hey, that's the Artful Dodger from this book that was really popular 15 years ago. In Heath's book, Fagen, his name in Oliver Twist is Fagin. She changes the spelling only of his name for some reason. He becomes this old coot that all the kids love. They have great affection for Fagin as adults, even though he taught them to steal. In Oliver Twist, he beats children and is a cruel miser. He's unequivocally a villain in Oliver Twist, even if sometimes he's used for a comedic effect. Then outside the happening, the other thing that really made me mad, outside the happenings of this book and continuing this worm hole of what exists in this book, Nancy and Bill Sykes show up. Despite being dead at the end of Oliver Twist, the book. In Oliver Twist, Nancy is the prostitute who takes care of the children for Fagin. She's the lover of Bill Sykes. She's the comic character to begin with in the novel. But by the end of the novel, she's murdered by Bill in an act of self-sacrifice to protect Oliver Twist. Bill accidentally hangs himself while running away from a mob pursued after he kills Nancy.
I'm really protective of Nancy as far as characters go. She's my favorite character in Oliver Twist. I love her. I think one of the things that I think is unethical about how Heath uses these characters is that Heath brings her back to life. She's dead in all Oliver twist. She brings her back to life, only to have her murdered again by Bill Sykes. And also, if you've read the third book, and you could look at my read by Goodreads about it because we don't need to talk about it in detail because it's not the book that we're covering. But she totally flattens Nancy's self sacrifice, and she makes her basically be a caricature of a poor mother who doesn't really care about her child. She doesn't care about raising her child. She ends up abandoning her to Frannie, the heroine of the third book. I think she flattens one of Dickens' most complex characters. This is the great exercise of Dickens is to humanize a character that Victorian society thought of as a flat character, a prostitute who steals things. He humanizes her, and he has her self-sacrifice for an orphan that is rewarded with middle class safety.
Nancy doesn't get to reap any of those benefits. She self-sacrifices in order to protect Oliver. That's the thing that just really made me mad, is that she brings Nancy back to kill her again. The third book is the last one I read because that made me so mad that I was like, I don't know if I'm ever going to read another Lorraine Heath book because I think it just so disgusted me. We'll talk a little bit more about the class politics when you talk about how class in Dicken's when we talk about how class works in the Lorraine Heath. But inclusion, I think this is unethical. And also she uses the characters in a way that suggests a worm hole opened up somewhere in Victoria in England.
Beth
Right. Yeah. Emma was texting me as she was reading this book. She was like, How does this book exist in universe? And Nancy's still alive and then ends up dying anyway. Yes.
Emma
The third book, she also has Dickens come back. So Dickens arrives at a party that-
Beth
He's like, My children, my little- little scamps.
Emma
Luke and Catherine throw. And he's like, Oh, you've all turned out so well. And I was like, I hate you.
Beth
Yeah, I love that rant. It's interesting to take Dickens, who is a champion of... Or not champion—just scrutinizing Victorian politics, as you say, and attitudes, and just reverting to the worst position on it. Actually, rich people are good, and we should connect all these people to money.
Emma
Dickens really didn't write a lot of aristocrats. The one big exception. There are a handful of baronets and low-level aristocrats throughout, and they'll often be the richest people or the people who have a secret in his books. But other than The Tale of Two Cities, which directly... Like, A Tale of Two Cities, he takes a more radical position where it's about the terror and the people dying, people dying by guillotine with Charles Darnay and everything. But Dickens, explicitly in that book, makes it clear that the Reign of Terror only happens because of the decadence of the aristocrats and the Ancien régime. So he's very clear in his distaste for the aristocracy overall, as a moral position. These are not stories that he's interested in telling. He's very interested in telling middle-class to lower-class stories. And so to have a series where you take his characters and insert them all into the aristocracy. Every one of these heroes, except for one who's a cop, marries into the aristocracy. It feels like she does not understand Dickens at all.
Beth
No. I'm going to take one of your points to jump off into our next point about this. I have not read Oliver Twist, but so the Brownlow, the guy who is Oliver Twist's dad's friend, he adopts Oliver Twist. Which I love and runs contrary to how this book approaches wealth and who is supposed to get money. It feels really gross. So this next point, listeners, is why does this series hate poor people? That's literally the prompt. There's lots for... Yeah, we're going to go through and talk about why we think this is. So on that point of you deserve wealth, there's just something inherent about blood and money, or money belonging to a certain group of people. So throughout the book, Luke has this guilt about how he received the earldom. He always refers to his grandfather as the old gent. He sets up this conflict in a conversation with Frannie. Luke thinks about how his grandfather had loved him, and Luke feels, quote, "he had tricked someone into giving his heart." Frannie disagrees and says that Luke made him happy, and that he died believing "that in your hands, it rightfully belonged," meaning being the earldom.
So it feels like this is a set up for a conflict where Luke, who understandably might feel like he did trick his grandfather because he has no memory and just played in. Like his grandfather was asking questions and he was just trying to say the right things, would learn to accept that his grandfather adopted him and that he became his family. So Emma and I were talking about this in the group chat where, at least in Austen's books, characters got adopted, or sometimes there's this idea you had an understanding with an older person that that character would inherit the money. This conflict is in Northanger Abbey with Catherine Morland. It's like neighbors. It's not even family. She's just good friends with her neighbors, and her neighbors don't have kids, and they take her to bath. And that's where Henry Tilney's dad thinks that she's going to inherit that money and that she's an heiress. So I think that Heath is projecting this feeling onto the past that did not exist, that people would care so much about blood and who gets the money.
Emma
My sense is that the blood relations is important for the earldom. And maybe if he wasn't blood related, he would... Other people would be upset. But also, I don't know why Catherine cares so much. Yes. Because even the quote you read is not...
Beth
That's right at the beginning.
Emma
That's at the beginning.
Beth
At other points, she's like, You don't deserve this. You are not... Right.
Emma
We need to uncover whether you're related to him or not. Because If you're not, it needs to go to your possibly evil cousin. Right.
Beth
Exactly. So, yeah. So this book lands on the side of the aristocracy as something innate to it. We later learned that Luke is the biological grandchild of the previous Earl. He has suppressed the memories, which is my least favorite way for authors handling information that they don't want their readers to know how to manufacture conflict.
Emma
And this also happens in the next book. The childhood memories are suppressed about the origin of someone's birth, which is also secretly not noble, but better off than he thinks it is.
Beth
We just got to take a quick break so I can stare off into the middle distance for a bit.
Emma
The third act is the exact same in the second book. It's the exact thing.
Beth
Okay, so I think the most egregious section is she has Luke recognize the humanity of the rich. So you're talking-
Emma
Happens in every one of these books.
Beth
So you're talking about how Dickens is infusing humanity, with these working class characters, challenging the Victorian attitudes. No, Lorraine Heath is like, But did you know that the Duke is a person? Okay, so here's the quote. This is from Luke's point of view: "He’d avoided the aristocracy because he didn’t want to see the similarities. He didn’t want to see them as people he could respect. Through Catherine, he was beginning to understand that they had fears, dreams, hopes, and burdens. They had troubles like everyone else and they faced them head on—like everyone else.
If he saw them as they truly were, the actions he’d taken to become one of them would shame him more than they already did. He’d been brought up to take what wasn’t rightfully his in order to survive. If he declared that he wasn’t the Earl of Claybourne, would they forgive him his sins? Or would he find himself dancing in the wind?”
And obviously, rich people are technically people. It's just... The narration is already with these rich people. We're already imbuing them with humanity. So this feels like a made-up conflict.
Emma
And Luke is an Earl at this point. Like, he's been an Earl since he was... He knew that he was going to be an Earl since he was 14. Yeah.
Beth
So it's like Luke needing to learn something and not the characters in his orbit who literally referred to him as the devil. The conversation around him is so over the top. Anyway. Oh, and I probably hate Catherine the most, just in general. They're probably neck and neck for how much I hate them, but Catherine maybe wins out a little bit. So they're making an omelet in the kitchen, and Luke talks about how it's unlikely he's the real heir, and Catherine brings up a few things that could make it possible for him to be the missing grandson. Then Luke says, Why are you trying to make me someone I'm not? Then Catherine responds, “The very first Earl of Claybourne was granted his title for services to king or queen. He earned the right to pass that title on to his son. If you’re not a descendant of that first earl—as much as I like you—it’s a disgrace for you to hold the title.”
Emma
It basically never changed. I guess the idea is that it never gets challenged at all, because the conclusion is that Luke is the earl's grandson, and we have confirmation of that. So it's like, Catherine never has to undo this thought that she has. And so, yeah, it's like maybe at the end of the book, she wouldn't care as much. But Loraine Heath does not tell us that she doesn't care as much or never has to have Catherine confront this very hateful thing to say to someone. I did have a small issue with the omelet scene that also probably would have been the top 10 things that annoyed me if there wasn't all these other stuff. I know.
Beth
I was going to be like, this feels so modern. As I was typing it into the script, I'm like, they're making an omelette.
Emma
So in the omelet scene, Luke has to make one omelet at a time, and Catherine makes fun of him by only being able to do one at a time. And I think it's supposed to show his Bachelorness.
Beth
But she doesn't know how to make an omelet.
Emma
But it also tells you Lorraine Heath has never made an omelet. You make omelets one at a time. That's how you make omelets, is that you make them one at... What are you talking about, that you make omelets. That's not how you do that. Maybe in a commercial kitchen, but even when I'm making omelets for other people, I've only ever made one at a time. This feels crazy. So I believe that Catherine thinks this way. She's from a class position, that it makes sense for her to think this way, but the book ends up endorsing it. And if Luke hadn't murdered his uncle, the man who was a child rapist would be the Earl. Would that be better than Luke being the Earl if he wasn't the Earl's his grandson. The book seems to think, yes, yes, that would be a better reality if Luke is not actually the grandson.
Beth
And also the fact that we've talked about in the past, how new a lot of these titles are. The way that... This is the Victorian times, but I feel like in the Regency, there's like new titles cropping up. But authors always treat it like it's been passed down from the Middle Ages. Right. As opposed to a thing that maybe a king would use for political power to grant. Right.
Emma
George III made more titles than anyone before him. Yeah. And like, Napoleonic era, like the Napoleonic Wars begat a lot of titles.
Beth
So the fact that Catherine doesn't even know how long... I feel like she should know. Like, oh, the Claybourne title is really long.
Emma
It would be in Debrett's! Famously. Yeah. This is what Debrett's is for. We see... We used to get references to Debrett's all the time, but nobody ever references it anymore. Yeah.
Beth
Okay. So we had to break up Emma's Dickens Rant, which is now under the poverty, like Lorraine Heath Hating on... I should say this book hates poor people. I don't know Lorraine Heath's personal opinion. Yes.
Emma
Or the book at least endorses the idea that characters in the 19th century who hated poor people do not need to get challenged. Like, this is such a... They're good to go. Dicken is strongly associated with depicting poverty. I don't think I need to tell people this. Oliver Twist and A Christmas Carol are his most famous books. The Christmas Carol, we have Tiny Tim. As a child, Dickens' father was imprisoned in Marshalsea partially over debts. For a time as a child, Dickens lived in a prison. This is not uncommon in the Victorian period. People house their families in their prisons, especially debtors. What he doesn't write about is the nobility and the aristocracy. I think it's important to understand that despite Dicken's sometimes money problems, but sometimes people put Oliver Twist and his poor book as wholly autobiographical or that he identifies with Oliver Twist. Oliver Twist is much poorer than Dickens ever was, even though he sometimes lived in a debtor's prison. They were firmly middle class, and he represents a member of the upperly mobile petit bourgeoisie. His father gets out of debtor's prison when his mother dies and leaves him in inheritance.
So even when he's in prison, he's in this class position where he has an expectation that he could get out of prison eventually unlike a lot of people. I think to write the series with Dicken's characters and Invented Friends that are plucked out of poverty by the nobility is to fundamentally misunderstand Dickens. Dicken saw how individual aristocrats could be charitable and liberal and artistic, and as he got more famous and wealthy, those are often people he hung out with because, again, he's in this upperly mobile petit bourgeoise where he's seeking a proximity to wealth. That is a common class position to be in. But he has personal disdain for the class at large and then affection for individuals, which I think is pretty common. That's common class position to be in. It doesn't mean that Dickens cared to write about the class. I read this quote from Andrew Sanders and Dickens in Context that he points out, In 1855, there were 4,000 people in all of the United Kingdom that used courtesy titles because of either their title or their familial connection to a title. And there were about 70,000 people who were on the level just below that.
So baronets and knights, nobles who did not have the right to sit in the house of Commons . The population of the whole country in 1861, which is around when this book was set, I think 1850s, was just under 30 million. So the biggest the number gets to of the nobility is about 0.2% of the population. Dicken's may not have really written about the nobility for the same reason Jane Austen doesn't. They're weren't that many of them around. And because Dickens set his book in London instead of the countryside, there are even fewer members of the landed gentry, which is what Jane Austen's bread and butter is. He's writing about middle class and poor people because he's living in London. And so this is a quote from Bleak House that I love that I think captures... It's long, but it captures, I think, Dickens' position about the aristocrats. Even though he's sometimes hanging out with aristocrats and sometimes has patrons who are aristocrats, this captures his middle class disdain for the aristocracy. Again, he doesn't want to abolish the aristocracy. He's not a radical, but he knows that it's a foolish institution.
“England has been in a dreadful state for some weeks. Lord Coodle would go out, Sir Thomas Doodle wouldn’t come in, and there being nobody in Great Britain (to speak of) except Coodle and Doodle, there has been no Government. It is a mercy that the hostile meeting between those two great men, which at one time seemed inevitable, did not come off; because if both pistols had taken effect, and Coodle and Doodle had killed each other, it is to be presumed that England must have waited to be governed until young Coodle and young Doodle, now in frocks and long stockings, were grown up. This stupendous national calamity, however, was averted by Lord Coodle’s making the timely discovery, that if in the heat of debate he had said that he scorned and despised the whole ignoble career of Sir Thomas Doodle, he had merely meant to say that party differences should never induce him to withhold from it the tribute of his warmest admiration; while it as opportunely turned out, on the other hand, that Sir Thomas Doodle had in his own bosom expressly booked Lord Coodle to go down to posterity as the mirror of virtue and honour.”
"Still England has been some weeks in the dismal strait of having no pilot (as was well observed by Sir Leicester Dedlock) to weather the storm; and the marvellous part of the matter is, that England has not appeared to care very much about it, but has gone on eating and drinking and marrying and giving in marriage, as the old world did in the days before the flood. But Coodle knew the danger, and Doodle knew the danger, and all their followers and hangers-on had the clearest possible perception of the danger. At last Sir Thomas Doodle has not only condescended to come in, but has done it handsomely, bringing in with him all his nephews, all his male cousins, and all his brothers-in-law. So there is hope for the old ship yet."
So he's writing about these aristocrats who are convinced that the England will not go on without them. But everyone else continues to exist and doesn't notice that these two men are not being able to form a government. He does this throughout Bleak House with these Coodle and Doodle guys, and they are this echo chamber of what the aristocracy means. It's very funny. But so what Dickens does write about, so this is an example of how he uses the aristocracy without these actual characters. But what he does write about is the middle class.
This is where I think the Heaths' changes, get into this is evil territory. So Dickens' characters are mostly the middle class. He's mostly associated with poverty, but most of his characters exist in the middle class. Just in the Victorian period, as is now, the middle class is one of it, fluidity. Dickens' ability to be raised in a debtor's prison and then rise up with his writing is an example of that. Characters are often going from one rung to another, transforming themselves with an inheritance or stroke of bad luck. Oliver Twist is still pretty early in his career in the 1830s, so the political stuff is not as explicit as it gets later. But we certainly see him condemn the workhouses and apprentice systems that the middle class benefits from. The people who are making money off Oliver when he's living in a warehouse are middle class. I referenced earlier, Little Dorrit, which is the book that would have come out right around the time the Lorraine Heaths book is set. The Little Dorrit, which I think is actually his saddest book, published between 1855 and 1857. So near when these books are set, most pointedly coalesces the critique of the unfeeling middle class that is primarily interested in distinguishing itself from the poor and experiencing fringe benefits of being close to the upper class.
So I'll have Beth read this letter from Dicken so that I can take a break from my rant. This is a letter that Dicken's wrote in 1855, around the time the Little Dorrit is being published, and again, around the time that Heath's book is set.
Beth
"As to the suffrage, I have lost hope even in the Ballot. We appear to me to have proved the failure of Representative Institutions, without an educated and advanced people to support them. What with teaching people to ‘keep in their stations’—what with bringing up the Soul and Body of the land to be a good child…what with having no such thing as a Middle Class (for, though we are perpetually bragging of it as our safety, it is nothing but a poor fringe on the mantle of the Upper)—what with our flunkeyism, toadyism,…reading the Court Circular for the New Testament…I do reluctantly believe that the English people are, habitually, consenting parties to the miserable imbecility into which we have fallen, and never will help themselves out of it…. But at present we are on the down-hill road to being conquered, and the people will be content to hear incapable and insolent Premiers sing Rule Britannia, and will not be saved."
Emma
It's like so biting. He's so good. I love Dickens. But yeah, he is a member of the Petit Bourgeoisie, and he is interested in critiquing the middle class. So he spends a lot of time on the middle class in his books because he's an observer, member, critic, and purveyor of middle class conservatism. This is what is so interesting about him, is that a lot of our perception of Victorian conservatism comes from Dickens. He's not a radical. But even though he's in this class position that he benefits from, of the upwardly mobile middle class, he's also critiquing those institutions because he sees how they harm people. He experienced that harm on the lower fringes of the middle class, and he also is a journalist, and he sees prisons. I think to write a series based on one of his books that totally erases middle class characters, that's something we do not have in these books. People are either the lowest of the low or the highest of the high. It suggests to me that Heath is uninterested in opening any doors to critique the class position that she likely occupies. She's doing the middle class thing of extolling the value of individual work to critique the two classes that don't work, so the leisure aristocracy and the unemployed poor, while totally shirking any responsibility that the middle class have, which that's the thing with classes.
The middle class exists because they want to distinguish themselves from the lower class. They should be a part of the proletariat, but they become the bourgeoisie because they want to attach themselves to the upper class by controlling the proletariat. They could be class traitors, become part of the proletariat. This is a little radical, but Heath just writes romance novels that hate poor people. But it makes me so mad.
Beth
Yeah. It's funny because it's like writing the aristocracy in romance is not unusual. We've talked ad nauseam about all these Duke characters, why...lots of people have said that this is what sells. But I'm like, you had this opportunity. If you're going to pitch your Dickens fan fiction, you could have moved that into middle class characters or just rich people. It's not like any of these titles are in bed with the Duke. Do you know what I mean? In bed with the devil. What does that conveying? I also had... I don't know how you felt about this on the topic of, Hating poor people. But just like, what is Luke the Devil for? Do you know what I mean? A lot of it just feels like he's not one of us. He's not our background. He's a supposed murderer. But we also have this Duke of Avendale who's like, everyone knows that his first two wives have died. Nobody's stupid. They probably can be like, something weird is going on, at the very least.
Emma
And I I don't know if he could decide. I think that, again, there's so many issues with this book. I don't know if Heath could decide why people don't like him. I felt like I couldn't sense in the book because at some point it seemed like Catherine's conversations with him where she says, The way that you get people to like you is you start showing up and being normal at parties. She's like, because she's doing all these lessons with Frannie, and she eventually calls Luke out and is like, You're not helping her by cultivating this reputation. And he's like, But people don't like me. And she's like, Well, people are never going like you if you continue to not go to parties or when you show up at parties, you're really weird. And that felt like Lord of Scoundrel's Dain situation where it's like, oh, maybe his ostracization is in his own mind. But then we see all these other characters speak about him so cruelly. It is not invented in his head. It's not just him being rude at parties. They hate him.
Beth
Also, the one part I felt so mad at Catherine. So Catherine invites Luke to that ball, the one that Winnie is throwing, and her husband gets mad about that. And I'm like, Catherine is not stupid. She knows that he is ostracized, and she knows that her friend has an abusive husband and needs everything to go perfectly. There's a scene where there's this over-the-top dialogue the Duke of Avendale has with Catherine, where he's like, You're a bad influence on my wife. The way he talks to her, I'm like, I don't... Maybe some abusers operate this way, but most of them are charming. You don't know that they're abusers. They're not to your face being like, You're such an outspoken woman. You're a bad influence. It's just like cartoon levels of dialogue. So like...
Emma
And that feels like an exemplar of what Heath.. She constantly is undercutting herself. So the setup is that Luke arrives at this party that Catherine has invited him to, but he comes in through the garden. And she's like, If you care about me, also parentheses Frannie, you'll go in through the front door. You need to show up. And it's like, Oh, that actually is a grand gesture that moved me a little bit, where I was like, Okay, this feels like a romance. This feels like something that is meaningful to these huge characters. It makes sense for these huge characters to do this. But then as a reader, I immediately forgot about the romance of the moment because I was like, Oh, she screwed over Winnie, who is in grave bodily danger. Yeah. And so it's like she can't even have this moment because she set it up so much that she has to have Winnie be abused. And this interest in seeing Winnie be hurt, I feel like is mirrored in how she treats Nancy in the third book, that it doesn't work.
Beth
Yeah, it's just like a plot device because we need to be hurt so much that it now propels Luke into action and be like, okay, now we're going to take care of the Duke of Avendale. We're going to whisk Winnie away with the doctor, and we're going to run off to my country estate and draw this guy away. Thinking that the wife is with him.
Emma
I don't know why the favor had to be murder.
Beth
Okay, we'll talk about that now, actually.
Emma
Okay. It doesn't make any sense.
Beth
I would like an award for how I read the introduction, because as I was like, Catherine needs him to murder somebody for her. I was like, I'm reading this the straightest tone, but it's insane, actually. The setup of this book is insane. Because like we've talked about, Luke murders one guy when he's a teenager for a good reason. One time. So it feels like such a stretch that Katherine is like, Okay, I need to get this guy offed. I'm going to go within the aristocracy— not like, just go hire a contract killer. I don't even know. Poison. There's got to be 10 thousand smarter ways to get rid of this guy.
Emma
It would almost make more sense if she approached Jack Dodger. It would make way more sense. If she went there first, who's still in the criminal world. She showed up there and that's how she and Luke meet. That would make so much more sense.
Beth
Or she didn't recognize him and thought he was he was like a one of Jack's. This still could have worked
Emma
If she had gone to Jack Dodger and then meets Luke there and Luke pretends to accept the contract kill because he doesn't actually want this woman to kill anybody, that would make sense. Because her preconceived notions about this man would mean that she thinks he's willing to kill. But he's like, actually, I'm going to accept this, but she doesn't go off and go meet a more dangerous person who would actually do it. That makes so much more sense than what happens in this book.
Beth
Yes. But no, Catherine goes to an Earl and is like, I'll give you money for this, which is, again, insane. That she doesn't know. Everyone knows how much- He's very wealthy. Everyone knows how much money everyone has at this time. They talk about it.
Emma
Wait, if he was an impoverished Earl, he would have no chance of society at all because he's ostracized, and he's very wealthy. He has ostentatious wealth.
Beth
Anyway, so this just sets up so that... Just so that Catherine is going to Dodgers Club in the middle of the night so they can have these interactions. And she's giving aristocrat lessons to Frannie, which we never see. It's just...
Emma
Yes. There are no scenes between Katherine and Frannie. This book does not pass the Bechdel test.
Beth
Yeah, they don't care about... She doesn't care about I thought this would set something up. They would become friends or like... Right.
Emma
Or that Katherine would feel worse about giving the lessons because she's like, Oh, Frannie doesn't want to marry Luke. Yeah. Why does Catherine ask Luke for money? That would make more sense. And then he pays her for the princess lessons. That would also make more sense than the contract kill.
Beth
Yeah. Okay. So you go with your point.
Emma
Okay. Yes. So I don't think that someone killing someone at 14 is a very good reason. So he kills the guy because he's raping Frannie. This does not make them a perma murderer. This is a core belief that I have, is that an act that you... Honestly, I think this about everyone. I don't think you even have to be 14. I think you can commit an incredibly violent act and not be doomed to continue to do violent acts. But specifically, it being a 14-year-old, it sounds like Lorraine Heith has adopted the myth perpetuated by Hillary Clinton about super predators. This is a word that she didn't invent, but she perpetuated. And this idea that When a young person commit a crime, unchecked, like when they commit a very violent crime as a child, we should not show them mercy, even though they're a child, because they will get them off, they won't be punished, and then they will evolve into someone who will do this without remorse. And that's basically what Catherine thinks about Luke, and that's also what the book thinks about Luke. The book never addresses that it is absurd that Catherine thinks this.
And Luke is really worried about what killing another person will do to his soul, which suggests that he doesn't want to kill again, but also he's basically willing to do it, and he agrees to it. It's sight unseen about why Catherine wants the guy dead. She doesn't tell him that he's abusing her friend. Again, a very good reason for wanting to harm someone is that they're protecting Winnie. But Luke is like, Okay, I'll do this for a very unequal favor.
Beth
Right. Give my future wife princess lessons. I'll go kill that guy.
Emma
Right. And possibly doom myself to hell.
Beth
Right.
Emma
I also think he does not understand that Victoria and noble people could not just... At no point in history could people kill... I mean, let's go back to the Middle Ages. This is a myth about the Middle Ages, that then she perpetuates even through Victorian times. This was not that long ago. This was 200 years ago. That Victorian noble people could never just kill with impunity. And neither could husbands just kill their wives without some... Maybe they wouldn't go to jail. A Duke maybe doesn't go to jail, but there would be social pressure at the very least. So the Duke of Avendale is supposed to have done. He's supposed to have killed two wives.
Beth
And I feel like this is a plot in other books where it's like there's suspicion around a noblemen, like his first wife, has died under mysterious circumstances, and he has a hard time integrating socially. And normally it ends up being like, he didn't obviously murder his first wife. But it is like that Gothic feel to it. But this one is... They're like, It's fine.
Emma
This is Victorian in England, like 170 years ago. This is a place that has courts and rule of law. The privileged people might have been able to get away with more, which is not untrue now, but there's still social pressure and reaction to bad acts. And also people do this thing all the time in romance novels where they're like, Duke's never go to prison. It's like, well, the two things that they can go to prison for are murder and treason. So they could go to prison. So nothing beyond the absurdity of Catherine trusting Luke with a job, nothing about Luke makes it obvious that he could do or get away with murder. He didn't get away with it the first time.
Beth
Again, like- Yeah, everybody knows. They're like, didn't you kill your uncle?
Emma
He's not a contract killer. We talked about his ostracization, but I think everything else that I have here we talked about. Yes. It just doesn't make any sense why Luke is the one who's tasked with this job. I worry that people are thinking that our issue with Heath is the bonkers plot. I don't mind a romance novel starting with a contract kill. I hope our listeners know that this is not our line here. Right. It's that Heath does not do any of the work to make it-
Beth
It's just the internal logic of-
Emma
The absurd plot.
Beth
Everything is not logic-ing. I've read other romance novels. I'm thinking specifically Anne Mallory, where it's like, she's holding it together, but she is following... She constructs the plot and then is following like, okay, I made the world this way. Therefore, a consequence from my original decision. Whereas, Heath, I feel like, is not following anything. Also, I want to bring up Winnie, where I hate that line in most romance novels, where it's like, I'm a man's property. Just because—No one investigates... I don't know. It's just a thing people say to be like, women in the past had it worse, and they're not really interested in investigating why things were different or how that might induce a character to act differently. But I feel like the one thing that Heath could have added was that I think at this time, men, they would have been the default parent. If she tried to divorce him, that would be the thing that is holding this marriage together. Even if she tried to escape to her parents house, the Duke of Avendale could come and get his son.
Emma
Yes, I think that is something. I thought about this. So if this is pre the divorce, the marital act of 1857. So like the... Winnie's ability to divorce the Duke of Avendale would be very, very difficult. Like, legally, she could have done it, but we don't have evidence that he's cheated on her. And usually, there has to be combined circumstances. So she probably couldn't have divorced him. And also, I think all of her wealth is tied up with him. But the question of her leaving, this seems like this would be a central question for Winnie. She has the ability to leave him. She has friends who would take her in. She has the ability to hide from him. What she could not do is take her son. Winnie never seems to consider that as... And she's incredibly devoted to her child. But Heath does not have this as an internal thought for Winnie at all or a concern with Catherine and Luke as they're trying to get Winnie away from the Duke. Like, what is going to happen to this boy who who seems to like his dad. That's the other thing is like the Duke of Avendale and the boy seem to have a good relationship or like that he doesn't abuse the child.
But again, Heath does not care about secondary female characters, even if they're future heroines later in the series.
Beth
Yeah, we could go on for a little bit. I have another point, but I'm like, no, it's fine. Let's move on. So where are we? Oh, yes. So Emma put this point. She was like, do Catherine and Luke have chemistry? Or we just told they have chemistry over and over again. So I'm like, we have concluded that Heath is bad at writing chemistry. You've read other books. I guess I've only read two at this point of like, Heath's entire body works. So she tries to achieve chemistry by putting her characters through the motions of attraction. But the moments are bizarrely chosen, in my opinion. It never feels like a finally moment if they kiss. It's more like, I guess. For example, Catherine arrives at Luke's home through the service entrance at night to ask him to do the murder. The servant says he can tell she's an aristocratic lady by her heir, and Luke assumes it's someone looking for sex, as this has happened in the past.
Emma
A thing that happens.
Beth
They talk for a few lines, and then he tells her that he knows she's trying to trap him into marriage. But even if her guardian swears to seeing everything, he won't do right and marry her. He then kisses her. And I was going to pull this from the book, but it's not like the writing on a line level that is bad, or if you take the scene out of context, it could still work. It's like the surrounding context is so bizarre the way that it's telling me that I meant to think that this is hot, when I'm like, I don't care about these people. And it's not like-
Emma
We just meant them!
Beth
And it's not like, I don't think you couldn't do something like that, and not like, maybe it could be hot. Do you know what I mean? But it's not working.
Emma
This is honestly how... There's a couple of different Tessa Dare novels that start this way, where the heroine shows up at the door. Sarah MacLean does this, too. And those are two authors that we're maybe a little bit more lukewarm on. They're not our five-star favorite reads are across the boards, though I have great affection for both of them or some of their books. There are quite a few Tessa Dare books where the heroine shows up and the hero maybe is thinking that they're available, and there's a kiss and there's a miscommunication. It creates this... You learn a lot about the characters and how they react in those moments. Those books, they're goofy and silly, but it's telling me something about the characters. This, I felt nothing to it. Mostly, I was like, Why is he touching her? Why is she not slapping him? He's like, Out of her hand. I don't have that reaction in every sudden kiss or miscommunication kiss ever. I don't understand why she's not slapping him because it's a stranger touching her face.
Beth
Yeah. Also because her intent before. So even if she is attracted to him, and we'll get to this in a second, that she has been attracted him since she was a teenager. But her intent in going there is to ask this man to do murder. So I feel like it's just like the... It's not... We're not... I don't...
Emma
It's also confusing because she dresses in a way as if she's going to seduce him. Right. It's another thing that we're... It's like this is this detail that he tells us to tell us that the scene is hot or romantic. But then, Catherine is there being like, No, no, no, I'm not here for that. I was like, But you're wearing a silk evening gown that shows off your bosom. Not that... But her outfit doesn't make any sense. Luke is correctly ascertaining what she's doing. But then she's like, No, actually, I'm here for something else. I'm like, Why are you wearing that? Or why did Please tell me you were wearing that. That's the thing. It doesn't make any sense.
Beth
Okay. Perhaps the biggest sin in this book is this defining moment between the two characters. It's just a look. A look, two seconds. They They scared each other down at a ball once, right at the beginning of the book. This is the very first few pages. And even other people were like, oh, remember that look that passed between you two five years ago? Here's the look in question. They're at a ball, And it's one of the only ones Luke attends. So, "She’d found it particularly distressing when his gaze had settled on her and lingered a second or two longer than was proper. She’d neither flinched nor looked away—although she’d dearly wanted to do both—but she’d held his gaze with all the innocent audacity that a young lady of seventeen could muster. She’d taken some satisfaction in his being the first to look away, but not before his strangely silver eyes had begun to darken, to appear—" how far away are they? Sorry. "To appear as though they were heated by the fiery depths of the very hell from which he was supposedly spawned."
Emma
So I have a question. I may be misremembering this, but this is also... This is not a scene This is her thinking about us. It's a memory she has.
Beth
Yes.
Emma
We are not in the ball room when this is happening. So I think that also creates a sense of where throughout the book, I was like, that? I think it could have been different structurally if we had a prologue where we We had POV sides of both of them, them reacting to each other. Winnie comes up to her at the ball and is like, Why was the Duke staring at you? We saw all this evidence that other people saw it. Again, I think that would work better if we had a prologue where the evidence Because I think when I first read this, I think I thought, Catherine is overblowing this look. But then throughout the book, the secondary characters and Luke, endorsed this view that she has of it. Because I read this initially thinking like, Oh, Heath is telling me that Catherine has fixated this man in a way that doesn't actually mean anything. That was my reading of it. But then, Heath tells us it actually does matter a lot.
Beth
Yeah. Yeah. Like you're saying, I think that's a good fix, too. Just put more weight behind it and get the dual point of view so we know how much it matters to both characters. But also maybe just escalate the interaction a bit. Like, maybe they dance together.
Emma
Dance together. Or- Which is the most easy- Or she tries to get him to dance with her throughout the party and people see that she's fawning over him. It causes ripples in society that she looked at him. It feels crazy, again.
Beth
And I'm behind a small interaction, causing a misstep and a ripple effect. But she just... Heath is not pulling it off here. But so, yeah, Luke also feels the same way we learn later on. So he references this look when he shows up. So this is in the same scene. She's at his house, and this is before he kisses her. He says her name, and she's surprised he knows who she is.
So he says, “I make it my business to know who everyone is.”
“You consider me my business?”
“Ah, yes, Lady Catherine. Isn’t that what you wanted when you challenged me that night at the ball?”
Like, what challenge?! It was two seconds. Oh, my goodness. You think that's the end of it, but it is not. Catherine talks about how the Duke of... So she's talking to Luke, and she talks about how the Duke of Avendale used to pursue her before diverting his attentions too many. She says to him, “Then that night after you came to the ball he stopped calling.” She released a little cry of surprise, her eyes wide. “Oh my goodness, you don’t suppose he changed his mind because I didn’t cower when you looked at me?” Like—
Emma
That scene in particular would make so much more sense if they had danced together. Because, again, if they did 30 minutes together in a-
Beth
She did a much more obvious brooch of social propriety. This person is on the outside and she approached him. Yeah, again, for the way the ripple effects she's making would make 10,000 times more sense. Why the Duke of Avendale would be like, She's not it.
Emma
Two seconds. Why is the Duke of Avendale even looking at her? It feels like you don't know everyone's making eye contact all the time in a ball. It just feels so... Like, he doesn't want... I don't know what she wants to do. I'm losing my mind. It's okay.
Beth
It's okay. We're going down together. It's fine. Okay.
Emma
So now I've read four of these books in the series in three days. I blazed through them because mostly I wanted to figure out if Charles Dicken showed up, and then he did, and then I got mad. I was like, I've got to stop. But she's constantly having people touch each other in ways that At the level of acquaintance that they are at in the book, if someone touched me that way in 2025, I would jump back. I just felt constantly people are touching each other's faces or brushing each other's hair immediately after meeting each other. It's supposed to be 1851. Why are all these people touching each other in public sometimes? In this book, when they're striking a deal and negotiating the terms, Luke grabs her chin and leans in at one point. Katherine asked him to unhand her, and he thinks he's surprised that he was holding her. And you're like, again, you've met maybe 15 minutes ago and you were holding her chin. That just feels so intimate in a way that he has not scaffolded at all.
Beth
This is a pet peeve of mine because writers know that instead of... You should externalize actions more than just having constant character thought. And so I feel like you have your characters doing certain actions because you're trying to convey to the reader... I feel like the one I always notice is character tilts their chin up, and it's supposed to be defiance, but they don't say the character is acting defiantly. They'll say the character tilted their chin up. And that's how I feel about touching in books. It's like they're trying to convey some information to the reader. But I feel all the time, I'm like, that'd be such a big action in real life. Like just you meet someone and even putting your hand on their shoulder feels like too much.
Emma
Too much. The touch barrier from Hitch. Sorry to bring up 2005's Hitch.
Beth
What do you mean, sorry. Sorry, I like that movie.
Emma
But it's like a big moment in a relationship when you touch each other for the first time, especially if you're not in a romantic relationship already. This idea that you're touching each other, especially... This is an appeal of historical romances, right? That we have this stronger...
Beth
Like you brush knuckles and you're like, Oh, my goodness. You know what I mean?
Emma
That means something more when you touch each other. They're just doing it so casually. It feels like she's spending things too quickly as far as a stakes go. And so when they do eventually kiss, you're like, Okay, I guess. And then at another point, Catherine is giving Luke really intimate head rubs. He has a headache. And again, she's come home from a princess lesson, and she's like, I'll give you a head rub. I'm like, I don't know if we were in that relationship together that I would give you a head rub right then. I know that I've read historicals that get intimate really fast. That's not the problem here. I feel like she's not doing any of the work that justified the quick intimacy. So every time I read it, it was so jarring. And this is a continual thing that happens in all the books that she does. It's that people are touching each other so, so quickly in a way that they seem as totally normal. I think Anne Malory actually does that, too, where touches often happen quickly. But people are like, oh, they think about it. They linger over it. They think, they're like, they remember the touch.
And I don't feel like that happens in this book.
Beth
Yeah. Okay. Our last point, I'm like, I don't even I don't know if I really care enough about Frannie. But I asked a question. I'm like, how do we feel about how she was incorporated into the story? Because I feel like it could have been done better as we were talking about. I think that's maybe why I asked it. Also, I feel like the pacing of this novel was thrown off by the Frannie thing. I feel like in their relationship, it should have just been the first... Like, one of the first hurdles that they were jumping over. And then Frannie could have just been a character that was a foil to Catherine in some way. Or do you know what I mean? It could have been some other reason. But no, it's like, I don't even know why she's there because it's like Catherine and Luke escalate their physical relationship so quickly. And Then Catherine will be like, well, what about Frannie? Right.
Emma
And Luke is like, oh, yeah, I'm still going to marry her. And there's no qualms. And it's just... And I guess Catherine has the sense that she shouldn't marry Luke because he's the devil earl. But also, he's an earl. I don't care.
Beth
She also says quite a lot that she's like, well, I don't really care about getting married in general. You guys are supposing I will find someone I want to marry. But that just feels like, why is he having Catherine say that? I don't know. Maybe it's to be like, she really found the love of her life. She wasn't even interested in marriage, and then she went for this guy, which I don't completely oppose. But it just feels like sometimes... I guess I hate when authors do that because it feels not like other girls feel to it. And maybe a little... Yeah, I just... It's not approached well often enough that I'm like, oh, yeah, that makes sense how that worked out. Yeah. So Frannie...
Emma
I don't think this book does not care about Frannie, for sure. Because she basically has no personality. And I think the most damning evidence of that is that we do not see the lessons between Frannie and Catherine. Frannie is just a way to get Luke and Catherine together late, together late at night, because the princess lessons have to happen in the evening for some reason, mostly so that Luke and Catherine are together at 2:00 in the morning all the time. She basically has no personality because we never see her. So my take here is colored by the fact that I've read her book, and what we learn about Frannie in this book is undercut a lot by that book. So we know that she's a bookkeeper and she's good at numbers. She's maternal, quote unquote, is what I said, though, because I more often than not, we're just told that she's maternal. Luke is like, Oh, she mothered all of us. And like, okay, weird, but also we don't actually see that personality with her a lot. And she's a little anxious about how she's perceived, and there are hints of sexual trauma. She has chasteness with Luke, like their relationship.
They've not had sex. They've not kissed, even really. And she wears dresses buttoned all the way up to the top so that people don't look at her. And that goes to the big reveal in the third, last book, like the circumstances of the murder that Luke commits. And there's also this vague sense that all of the orphans are in love with her. Luke is the one who to marry her, I guess, because he's the Earl. That's the other thing. It's like, why is Luke in love with her? And all the other guys are also in love with her, but also in the same fake way. And she doesn't want to be an aristocrat. And so that happens throughout the book. As the books continue on, the men take turns being in love with Frannie. And then in the third book, I think it's the cop who's like, he's like, I'm next in line. I get to marry Frannie now. And then Frannie marries the Duke, and he's like, Oh, no, now I got to find a new lady. Okay. So the fact that we just don't see the lessons, it's just we always jump to this decompression session after the lessons between Catherine and Luke.
It just... Frannie is nothing. And she's supposed to be the heart of why Luke is doing these things. And Catherine. We were told that Catherine and Frannie formed this friendship, but we don't see it. It feels like she's just another faceless piece of the structure of a romance so that Heath can get from one scene to another. She doesn't feel like a real person. And I think that it's totally condemned by when you read her book, so much of what we learn about her in this book, she says she doesn't want to be Countess, and then in the third book, she becomes a Duchess. And in the third book, too, it's not... The issues with her, the conflict between her and her Duke really is that he wants her to be his mistress, and she's like, I'm not sure if I want to be mistress or if I want to be married, even as we're falling in love with each other. And married in general. She really doesn't have any qualms with the aristocracy anymore. And they actually break up because it's like he won't pull the trigger on the marriage. It doesn't make any sense.
Beth
Well, that's a good note to end on. I'm sorry I made you read this book.
Emma
It's okay. I got something out of it. I got a new least favorite book of the year, and I will bite my tongue the next time. I'm like, I want more of something in romance because it could turn out like this instead.
Beth
No, I'm positive. Let's not be pessimistic. I am optimistic there's an author out there who can integrate, even just in a simple... Just the book the heroine is reading is Charles Dickens. Do you know what I mean? It doesn't even have to be integrated much into the plot, or they just talk about the plot and it advances their relationship in some way.
Emma
I guess I will say to Loraine Heath's credit, as people are listening to this episode and wrapping up with us, we just both really hated this book and I think are maybe not done with Lorraine Heath, but this book will color how I approach any of her books in the future. These books are very well-reviewed and very beloved by lots of people. They have really good goodreads, reviews. A lot of the issues that I had with it were not addressed a lot. I didn't see a lot of the issues spelled out in the goodreads to read reviews. I did get a comment on my sub stack that I appreciated because it made me feel less crazy. I think this is maybe an issue that I have with romance at Large, and maybe I hope this episode changes maybe how people talk about these books a little bit, is that these books are often proffered as cross-class romances, or not just the series, but her books in general. Lorraine Heath is on list of cross-class romances written well. I would say that is the worst part of this book, is how she handles class.
That is what makes me sad that this is... Because I think cross-class romances are really interesting. I think it is a vector for very interesting conversations about romance. I think if you think that this is what's the best thing that cross -class romances, romance has to offer, I think you should read more cross-class romances. And also consider your class position when you're reading these books. Why does this book work for you? And what are you not looking at? What are you not considering when it comes to class position with these books? Because I don't know how you can have any class consciousness and read these books and think that they're handling class well. Even if you enjoy the romance, even if the big gestures and the look across the ball room work better for you, these books do not handle class well. I think that is objective, whether you like the books or not.
Beth
Yeah. Let's pitch maybe Jeannie Lin and Cecilia Grant as good examples of cross-class relationships. That also looks at the consequences. And I say consequences neutrally, just like these two people of different classes became family and there are repercussions in the next books. Yeah. I also want people to know that we... Emma and I picked this book because this came out in 2008. So I think we'd hoped it would be before review inflation, people sending out arcs and you get really good reviews. We did want one of her better books.
Emma
Wait, but neither of us love the Gorilla Twins book. And we also I love what it stands for in romance as far as pitching historical romance as bonkers plots. I think that book has a messed up relationship with race and class, but also connected to the plot, whereas I could see someone writing that book and also writing a smarter, more interesting book that It doesn't make me so annoyed. We did really try to go into this good faith, and it just did not work for us.
Beth
Yeah, I don't think Lorraine Heaths for us, but yeah, we'll end on that note. Maybe not for us. Did have a good time, though. Again, we're not really hate readers, but it was fun seeing Emma's reactions personally and then just talking, like as I was reading, we were sending screenshots to each other. Look at this line. It was a good time in hindsight. I will enjoy listening to this episode.
Emma
I'm glad it's over. I'm glad that I freed myself. If Dickens had not shown up till the fifth book of the series, I think I would have lost my mind, but I got away with only reading four of them.
Beth
Yeah. Shout out to Heath for that. Okay. Thank you so much for listening to Reformed Rakes. If you'd like bonus content, you can subscribe to our Patreon at patreon. Com/reformedrakes. You could follow us on Twitter, Blue Sky, and Instagram for show updates. The username for those platforms is at reformedrakes, or you can email us at reformedrakes@gmail. Com. We love to hear from our listeners. Please rate and review us on Apple and Spotify. It helps a lot. Thank you again, and see you next time.
