Notorious Pleasures

Show Notes

Notorious Pleasures is the second book in Elizabeth Hoyt’s Maiden Lane series. Elizabeth Hoyt came onto the historical romance scene with her 2006 debut The Raven Prince. She writes strong characters who have opposing ideological centers to generate conflict. Lady Hero, the daughter of a duke, is set to marry Lord Mandeville, Thomas, in an advantageous society marriage. They will consolidate lands and interests and Hero can strengthen his parliamentary position . Her desire to marry Thomas comes about mostly so she can appease her brother, the one who arranged the match. Yet, it’s Thomas’ brother, Griffin, that catches Hero’s eye. The feeling is reciprocated and made all the more complicated by the gossip that Griffin seduced Thomas’ first wife.

Books Referenced

Scandalous Desires by Elizabeth Hoyt

The Raven Prince by Elizabeth Hoyt

Married by Morning by Lisa Kleypas

Marrying Winterbourne by Lisa Kleypas

Works Cited

Check out Georgian clothes from 1730 to 1739

Riskyregencies.com 2013 Interview with Elizabeth Hoyt

“Love, Gin, and Pirates: PW Talks with Elizabeth Hoyt”

“LADIES’ DELIGHT?”: Women in London’s 18th Century Gin Craze” by Emily Anne Adams

“The Gin Epidemic: Much Ado About What?” by Ernest L. Abel

Transcript

[00:00:00.000] - Beth

Welcome to Reformed Rakes, a historical romance podcast that would throw an earring at you to stop you from having sex with a married woman. My name is Beth, and I'm a grad student, and I write at the Substack Ministrations.

[00:00:11.700] - Emma

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

[00:00:16.580] - Beth

Notorious Pleasures is the second book in Elizabeth Hoyt's Maiden Lane series. Elizabeth Hoyt came on to the historical romance scene with her 2006 debut, The Raven Prince. She writes strong characters who have opposing ideological centers to generate conflict. She doesn't shy away from men in wigs, as her books are set in the early Georgian period. Once a favorite setting, though never more popular than the Regency, for authors like Georgette Heyer, the Georgian period encompasses the time during the Hanover dynasty from George I to George IV. The Georgian period is a period of expansive trade, including lots of activity by the East India Company and Royal African Company, where many landed families made their riches.

[00:01:00.640] - Beth

Lady Hero, the daughter of a Duke, is set to marry Lord Mandeville, Thomas, in an advantageous society marriage. They will consolidate lands and interests, and Hero can strengthen his parliamentary position. Her desire to marry Thomas comes about mostly so she can appease her brother, the one who arranged the match. Yet, it's Thomas's brother, Griffin, that catches Hero's eye. The feeling is reciprocated and made all the more complicated by the gossip that Griffin seduced Thomas's first wife.

[00:01:54.810] - Beth

So I haven't read much Elizabeth Hoyt and Emma pitch this one in particular to me. I could see why, like I mentioned in the intro, Hoyt is doing unique things. I just can't get off the Ghost of St. Giles because he is dressed in a Harlequin costume. Yeah.

[00:02:15.410] - Emma

Yeah, the Ghost of St. Giles, he's there in all the maiden lane books, but the three through six actually deal with the characters who are the Ghost of St. Giles.

[00:02:23.490] - Beth

Like he's the hero, but he's like... A POV character, yeah. But he still exists in the other books. Okay. Right.

[00:02:30.050] - Emma

So in the first three books, they're just aware of... There's this guy who's running around St. Giles who is like a... He's a Batman. They don't know what Batman is yet, obviously, but he's a masked figure who is a renegade and vigilante. And St. Giles is a very, very poor neighborhood of London, where lots of gin distilleries are, which is important for this book. But most importantly, he's dressed like a Harlequin. He's not in all black. He's dressed like an effectively-

[00:02:58.010] - Beth

Yeah, like red and black.

[00:03:00.520] - Emma

Yeah, diamond tights, like Harlequin, like Harley Quinn. Which I feel like is so... Hoyt is high concept, big delivery. I just can't imagine anyone else coming up with this or extending it for 12 books. I think that's the other thing is that she occupies the universe for so long.

[00:03:21.040] - Beth

She's like, not only is she swinging big, she's like, I'm going to keep carrying this. I was like, who is she I was trying to think. We thought maybe Jane Anne Krantz , and then maybe more contemporary matches of Lisa Kleypas, because I feel like they write scenes similarly. I remember the scenes very well, where people are standing in relation to each other, building up the tension between the characters, if that makes sense. So just the writing the scene on a technical level reminded me of Kleypas. And then also Sarah MacLean, maybe for the Goofy goofy concepts.

[00:04:01.490] - Emma

Yeah, Goofy concepts. And also I do think that there's this opposite attracts thing that Maclean adds. I think that maybe comes from MacLean wallpapery rom-com aspect, where it's like she's much more influenced by, I think, modern movies than Lisa Kleypas is. So I think that there's some of that. I don't know if that's where Hoyt's getting it from, but I think there's that. It's like, oh, in order to have a rom-com, you have to have opposites attract. And I think every book that I've read by Hoyt is an opposites attract. They were like, we are opposed in some massive way. I'm trying to think if there's any of them that are more like friends. I guess the marriage of convenience one. Even then, they're still coming from opposite poles of how are we approaching this? Because he's the Ghost of St. Giles, and she's like, I hate the Ghost of St. Giles. Yeah, I think there's always that. I've read a handful of Hoyt. She's very prolific, considering that she didn't start writing until 2005, 2006. She's written, I think, close to 20 books or something. One a year, I was like, I want I think it's a point where you become like, Oh, wow, you've written a lot.

[00:05:04.140] - Emma

I've read a third of the maiden lane books because they're 12 in this universe. We were talking before how it's like, That seems like a really long series, but really the series is like, it's 12 books, but there are four trilogies within it. And once I thought about it that way, I was like, Oh, that's not that different than the way Kleypas writes her, I don't know what you call her universe.

[00:05:21.890] - Beth

They're all the same universe, but it's like you have families. Yeah.

[00:05:24.880] - Emma

Yeah. Families. Yeah. And even Sarah MacLean, as she goes through, they're always some connection. And so sometimes you'll read a book in Maiden Lane and characters that you've met before will come, and the other ones, they won't appear because that person's on the far edges of another book, which does make reading them out of order difficult. I would say if you wanted to read them out of order, I would probably read a trilogy, one through three or four through six together, and that they all are interconnected. And I think this was probably pretty early in the Elizabeth Hoyt that I read. I do feel Hoyt feels outside of Kleypas this. I think she's a little bit older. Like her actual Maybe it's Kleypas' age, but she's not really a descendant of Kleypas in my mind.

[00:06:03.620] - Beth

Well, she started when she was... I think she got published when she was 35. So I feel like some of these... Kleypas famously started publishing very young. So yeah, it feels different. It's a weird...

[00:06:16.370] - Emma

Yeah, it's like she started later, but is more generationally. So maybe her influences are more like Kleypas, even though she's coming into publishing post-Kleypas. Actually, I was thinking about it. I was like, one of the books that it reminded me of is the Windflower, our pirate adventure. We did Haley with the charm. And she has a lot of great side characters. I thought you would really like the brother-in-law. So Griffin has a brother-in-law. His sister is a fuddy-duddy, and he's like, I don't know why she likes her husband. I guess he's rich and he's just an idiot. But that side character feels very like the windflower. People just come and go and they're not affecting the plot at all. And that's fun. And it's just charming to me. And it's like, I don't really care what happens. It's like a fun universe to hang out.

[00:07:03.010] - Beth

I know you're not a Gilmore Girls person, but to me it feels very like Amy Sherman-Paladino, Gilmore Girls, where you just are having fun with the bit. So you just have a character come on because you have a bit or you think it's funny, and then that character is gone. That's what it feels like.

[00:07:18.900] - Emma

I think it's one of the reasons why I keep going back to her. And so The Raven Prince is actually a good example, which I think is her most famous book. I think it's her first one. People always cite The Raven Prince. It has a trope in it that I really don't like that much with sex workers. I think it's exemplary of Hoyt has this broad wielding of politics that we're going to talk about in this episode that annoy me. I think it's going to annoy me more when she does it at the expense of sex workers. But again, I read the book in a day. That was a note that I made in my Goodreads reviews. I was like, and I think I said something like, I'm not sure if I've ever read a book where I said, what? Out loud more while reading it. But I did read it in one day to her credit. That's from my Goodreads review. I blazed through the book. I was super confused by the plot. I was like, What's going on? But I still read it, and I finished it, and I didn't give up on it.

[00:08:07.340] - Emma

And so there is something there charm-wise, which I think is one of the reasons I was pushing to do a Hoyt book, because it's someone I go back to a lot. I don't think I've ever rated one of her books five stars. I would say none of them are my top 20 romance levels ever, but she's consistent and I like hanging out in her universes. So that's fun. And I thought Beth would get something out of this, even if it wasn't... Again, I didn't expect be one of your favorites, but I thought we'd have interesting things to say.

[00:08:32.370] - Beth

Yes, I think we do. And a three-star author, complementary.

[00:08:37.240] - Emma

Yes.

[00:08:37.650] - Beth

I think it takes a lot of talent to write... Do you ever get in that mode? It's like a three-star book, but you read all of them in the series. You were compelled to read all of them. And I love that feeling. Yeah.

[00:08:52.390] - Emma

And reading this book again, I was like, oh, I should read more for it. That's the thing. When I'm down in the dumps and can't get through a romance novel, which happens sometimes where I read a bunch of bad ones in a row. Hoyt would pull me out of a reading slump, I think. I am very appreciative of that. I just think she's really consistent. I think a lot of my friends on Goodreads, I saw they tend to rate her. So again, I I don't see a lot of five stars. I see a lot of two through four, which is, again, a skill. Because there's some authors that I've written some of my favorite books ever, and I don't really like their other books. And you can just go there and hang out for a couple of hours in this Georgian bonkers, like Batman World.

[00:09:33.350] - Beth

Okay, I will relay the plot as best as I can. So we'll do that, and then we'll talk a bit.

[00:09:43.410] - Beth

London, England, October 1737. Lady Hero Batten, the daughter of a Duke, finds herself trapped in a room with a couple engaging in sex who are unaware of her presence. She throws her earring at the man to get his attention. He seems unbothered and asks if she's the person who likes to watch. Hero announces that the woman's husband is in the hallway. The man hides, and Hero steps in front of the settee to further hide him. She helps the lady with her husband with a cover story, and the woman leaves with her husband. Hero and the man argue and both hope that their paths never cross again. Hero rejoins her fiancé, Thomas, or Lord Manville, downstairs at the ball. He introduces her to his brother, Lord Griffin who is, of course, the man from before. Griffin asks her to dance, and while they do, he tells her his brother is the person who would have assumed the worst if he had discovered Hero in the same room as him. Thomas focuses most of his attention and time on his career in parliament. Griffin then says of himself, I am a veritable blackguard, a seducer, a rake, the worst profligate.

[00:10:54.900] - Beth

I'm notorious for my pleasures. I am, in short, the devil himself, and you my dearest lady perfect, would do well to avoid my company at all costs. Thomas discusses the terms of the engagement with Hero's brother, Maximus. They talk of the gin trade and Maximus's unflinching determination to destroy it. They observe a woman, Mrs. Tate, a widow and a woman of 38, dancing with a younger man. It's clear Thomas has a history with her, and he vouches for her good humor and how she chooses unmarried romantic partners. Hero's first cousin tells her that she should stay away from Griffin because he seduced Thomas's first wife. Griffin meets with his business partner, nick. Griffin is one of the biggest gin distillers in London. A rival, a man known as the Vicar, has threatened to destroy other gin distillers so he can have a monopoly. Lady Hero heads to St. Giles, where she is one of the patrons for the home for unfortunate infants and founding children. After her visit with the house matron, Silence Hollingbrooke, Griffin spots her and enters her carriage.

[00:12:03.240] - Beth

They talk, and Griffin asks Hero if her brother knows she goes to St. Giles. She eventually owns that he doesn't as their parents were killed there when she was eight years old. Therefore, he hates St. Giles. Griffin says he won't tell her brother or her fiancé if she allows him to accompany her whenever she heads to the orphanage. She counters that she knows he seduced Thomas's first wife and she shouldn't be seen in his company, and Griffin laughs. He doesn't confirm or deny what she says, merely remarks that it seems she and everyone else has made up their minds on the matter. Eventually, she concedes to his deal. They're rebuilding the orphanage, but the construction isn't going well. The architect they hired has made off with most of the money and done none of the work. Griffin sets up an appointment for her to meet a new architect. He offers financial support to which she declines. They go on an outdoor excursion. Hero notices Mrs. Tate watching Thomas, and Griffin sees that look and is angry with his brother. Later, Thomas speaks with Mrs. Tate, and we learn they had an affair, and she ended it when he got engaged. He reiterates he can't marry her because of her age, 38, as he needs to produce an heir.

[00:13:24.640] - Beth

Fireworks start up, and in a secluded area, Griffin kiss his Hero. They make out for a bit before her hero runs away. Her façade had cracked. She realized with shock that she was as mortal as anyone else, as fallible as the most fallen woman. The next morning, Hero tries to sneak away to St. Giles without Griffin, but he's kept tabs on her and shows up anyway. In the carriage, she asks that they don't speak about the previous night. They meet with the new architect and work out a deal to buy new materials. On the way back, a runner approaches Griffin, seeing nick wants to speak with him. Hero waits in the carriage and nick shows Griffin a dead body, likely from the vicar. Hero, of course, walks in and is angry with Griffin for running a gin distillery. In the carriage, Griffin explains that his father was terrible with money, and upon his death, Griffin discovered the family was in financial straits. Even though Thomas was the older brother, he was likewise terrible with money. All Griffin had at that point 10 years ago was a bad grain harvest, and he knew a broker would sell it to a gin distiller, so Griffin decided to buy his own still.

[00:14:40.320] - Beth

In response to Hero's question, if Thomas knows, Griffin says, Never fear, he said with a deep and devastating cynicism. Your fiancé's hands are clean of all of this. Thomas worries about far nobler things than where the money comes from to clothe him. His interests lie with parliament and such, not bill collectors. Hero says her brother, Maximus, is obsessed with rooting out Jinn because of the effect it has on the poor of London. He blames Jinn for contributing to his parents' deaths. She reasserts she is marrying promise. The next time she heads to the orphanage, she picks up Griffin instead of having him track her down. The point of her visit is to show Griffin the effects of Jinn. He sat forward, Listen and listen well, my lady. I like who I am and what I do.

[00:15:33.330] - Beth

I'm an unrepentant rake who makes illegal gin. Don't think you or anyone else can change me, even if I wanted to be changed. They talk a bit more and she says he's not as rake-ish as he thinks he is. She asks him if he really seduced Thomas' wife, and he said he didn't. They have sex in the carriage. Lady Hero takes a carriage ride with Thomas. They discuss his first wife, and he says that she was the one to tell him that she was with Thomas also says Maximus is honing in on a titled gin distiller. They spot Mrs. Tate across the way. Thomas says of her, She is in my past. I met her when I was rather down, I'm afraid. He adds, he won't think of the past anymore, and Hero agrees. Hero heads to Griffin's home, and he answers the door looking less than decent. She wants to tell him something, but they end up having sex again. After, Griffin proposes to her, saying he took her virginity. This time they had penetrative sex. She says they have nothing in common and their goals don't align. She leaves. At a ball or something like a house gathering, their respective families meet up.

[00:16:45.290] - Beth

Griffin taunts her with the earring she initially threw at him when they first met, asking, Whose earring does this belong to? In private, he asks her to marry him again. She asks if he loves her, to which he says he has feelings. He points out that she doesn't love Thomas, and she says that's different because their arrangement works better, and they both know they don't love each other. She runs away, but they run into each other later, and surprise, surprise, they have sex again. Talking to her brother later, Hero asks Maximus not to move against Griffin. Finally, he spoke, Whatever Redding is to you, it must stop immediately. At the Distillery, Griffin and nick talk. Griffin goes outside of the warehouse, and in the interim, nick gets shot and dies. Hero shows up at Griffin's house later to warn him about Maximus. Griffin tells her no, that his business partner died and he can't let the vicar's men get away with it. He asks her what he is to her, and in her silence, they start kissing again. Griffin tells her they're special together. Finally, coming to a resolution, Hero goes to Thomas and tells him that she can't marry him.

[00:17:59.680] - Beth

After he asks several times what he did or if it's anxiety, Hero tells him that she slept with Griffin. He strikes her in the face. Griffin happens on them right after. He sees the mark on her face and then beats the shit out of Thomas. Hero leaves and Griffin has a talk with his mother. Maximus insists she marry Thomas or else he'll arrest Griffin. Griffin meets with Maximus. He tells him he's not asking for Hero's hand, merely informing him that he will be marrying her. Thomas shows up drunk at Mrs. Tate's house. He tells her the engagement is off. When she asks about his face, he is honest with her, and Lavinia says he deserved it. They sleep together. Griffin and Thomas have a heart-to-heart of sorts. Griffin asks Thomas why he still chooses to believe he seduced his first wife when Thomas knows deep down that he didn't. Thomas owns up to being jealous of Griffin. He adds that if Maximus pushes the marriage still, he will marry Hero. A lot more happens, but eventually Thomas realizes he won't marry for political gain and proposes to Mrs. Tate. She says, yes. Griffin sets a trap for the vicar's men and then blows up his own, still in the process.

[00:19:19.170] - Beth

Hero is happy because he's no longer going to be distilling gin. They get married. The end.

[00:19:28.160] - Beth

Okay, so this discussion point I called the Georgian setting, but we mostly just talk about gin. I think we just hone in on that. But it is a major plot point in the book, so I'm not upset about that. I think this It was definitely something interesting to talk about. I think why we wanted to talk about Hoyt, because I feel like it's... I love giving a mixed review. It's my favorite. Why does this work? Why doesn't this work? So the year is 1737. And so Elizabeth Hoyt is pulling from this history of the gin epidemic or gin craze. Gin was the drink of choice for the lower classes because production costs fell below that of beer and wine. So there are reasons why gin got excessively criminalized. And I'm pulling from Ernest L. Abel's article, The Gin Epidemic: Much to Do About What. So the prevailing ideologies Wages at the time held that simplistically, you had your genteel, upper class, and then your head, and then your working, lower class. The upper class consumed and the lower class produced. Wages had to be kept down to keep people perpetually working. So people of all classes got drunk.

[00:20:48.790] - Beth

Abel argues gin drinking and drunkenness among the lower classes got attacked, not out of concern for health or because drunkenness was more commonplace, but because it affected the domestic economy of beer. So, quote, When a critic of cheap gin said that it cannot be supposed that laboring people can spend their money in both beer and gin, he wasn't condemning drunkenness per se. He was merely pointing out that the money being spent was going to the gin makers and sellers instead of their counterparts in the beer industry. In 1735, when the long grand jury met at the Old Bailey to present to the mayor, such public nuisance disturb and annoy the inhabitants of the city, many complaints said that the lower kind didn't want to work anymore because gin had robbed them of their power. Abel argues that actually people didn't want to work dangerous jobs for low pay. Even the notorious Adam Smith found, quote, even the most fit carpenters in London did not remain so for more than eight years, and at the height of their earning capacity, hardly earned enough to buy a newspaper. To no one surprise, employers opposed unionizing and blamed pub owners for giving a place for workmen to meet in their unlawful combinations, which is what you would call a union, or it was like a free union, where they could discuss fewer hours and maybe making more money.

[00:22:09.580] - Beth

Exasperating working conditions were the Enclosure Act, which took what land that had been held in common, like out in the country, and it got converted to private land for mostly huge, like large landowners, privatize this land that was once held in the Common. So you had an influx of people from the countryside moving to the city to London in looking for work. So of course, an increase in crime was blamed on gin drinking rather than the more obvious factor of an increased population would just lead to more incidences of crime. From a vice article, they're quoting Thomas Fielding. So I'm quoting Thomas Fielding, but this is where I got the quote. Tom Jones, author in London Magistrate, said in his late 1751 political pamphlet, Inquiry into the Causes of the Late Increase of Robbers, A new drunkenness unknown to our ancestors, is lately sprung up among us, which, if not put a stop to, will infallibly destroy a great part of the inferior people. The drunkenness I here intend is by this poison called gin, the principal sustenance, if it may be so called, of more than 100,000 people in this metropolis. Okay. Able points out that most of the unrest was around on food costs.

[00:23:31.430] - Beth

Laboring families spent as much as 50 up to 80 % of their income on food. And then he points to one final hostility for gin was that it was foreign as it originated from Holland. He concludes, While reformers pointed to excessive gin drinking as the cause of social unrest, poverty and overcrowding laid the foundations for the era's social problems, and the low cost of gin offered an escape from those realities. Reformers were blind to the economic ideology that produced those conditions because they were part of the social class that created that ideology. They were so inclined to blame gin because it was not only the preferred drink of the inferior class of people, but also a foreign drink, and therefore they could avoid self-recumulation because they could dismiss problems associated with gin drinking as not of their own making.

[00:24:24.050] - Emma

I love that you were like, We're just going to talk about gin, but it's actually- It's such a big part of It's a big part of the book. It's a big part of the book. But also, this is why I love historical romance, especially. It's like people rag on the Regency and they rag on the 18th century. But it's like, this is when modernity is being invented. It's like, this is what's happening. People are moving to the city and new problems are happening. This is why we get the Newgate. This is why we get the Bow Street Riders. It's because people are congregating around cities and industry. It's like, this is why historical romance is so exciting in the 18th and 19th century because we're experiencing modernity. It just excites me. This is why I love it. But I think we have this background of what's actually going on with the gin. For me, this is a big question for this book is where does Hoyt land and how she uses this? It's a super interesting thing, but it's like, how does Hoyt actually use it? I think it actually becomes less interesting in the book, which is a bummer.

[00:25:19.480] - Emma

I think even reading this book, it's pretty clear that gin is a moral panic. I mean, Elizabeth Hoyt in 2000, when I went in this book in 2008, is not reading You're wrong about, or not listening to You're wrong about. But I was like, this is a moral panic. It's so clearly a moral panic. It has all the hallmarks of it. It's gripping London. I think I have this deep sense that Hoyt has a little sea conservative streak about how she adopts the politics of the gin fear in the book. Because I don't think there's no character that pushes back on the received wisdom that the gin is ruining the lower classes and we need to save them from themselves. That is the consistent theme in the characters in the book. And it's a bizarre experience.

[00:26:04.340] - Beth

Hero has this afternoon's school special moment where she takes Griffin to the orphanage, and she's like, See what your jinn has brought? Look at all these orphans.

[00:26:13.430] - Emma

He does call out as a little stupid. He's like, What did you... This is not going to work.

[00:26:17.990] - Beth

Yeah, he's like... Well, his response is very... He's like, I'm a rake. I do rake-ish things.

[00:26:23.670] - Emma

He's like, I do things that are immoral, including hooking up with you. So you have to take the good with the bad. But it's so clearly a moral panic in that it focuses on the activities of the urban poor, especially urban poor women. Women get brought up a lot in this book as the people who are gin drinking. We have this moral panic. It's focused on women. I think also the female aspect of it, we see this demonized in the propaganda that's coming out in the 18th century. Gin is personified as a woman and beer is personified as a woman, and beer is personified as a man. And these gin mothers were worried about women drinking gin while they're breastfeeding. But also it's weird because ethanol is ethanol. That's the other characterization that gin drunk is somehow different than beer drunk, which is not how alcohol works.

[00:27:17.810] - Beth

Yeah, but beer is domestic and the good thing, and gin is foreign and feminine.

[00:27:25.910] - Emma

Yeah. So I read this article called Ladies Delight, called Women in London's 18th Century Gin Craze by Emily Ann Adams. She talked about how gendered reaction was. It's in response to these articles about... She does a really good historiography about how people have talked about gin. But gin was a drink that initially didn't have the stigma of alehouses and being an alewife associated with it. So women could drink, you could buy gin and take it home, opposed to beer, which I think you had to drink at the alehouse. Or it was the social norm of drinking beer was at an alehouse. So there wasn't this barrier of women drinking it. So probably more women were drinking gin than drinking beer. And I think there could have been interesting pushback in the book about this. I think the characters of the Silence and Winter Makepeace, who are more associated with the working class, maybe could have pushed back a little bit on it, but it doesn't seem like Hoyt uses that for anything. But it's an odd experience to read this book, where the substance is being demonized, and that doesn't go challenged pretty much in the book.

[00:28:26.550] - Emma

And it's also something that is currently on my counter in my home. When you watch Reefer Madness, an exploitation film from the 1930s about marijuana, you're like... It felt like that, except it was Elizabeth Hoyt adopting this much, much later. And it's like, We drink people drink gin now, and it's fine. Nobody is like... The problems of alcoholism or alcohol are not unique to gin. We know this now, and it's weird reading this book that adopts these moral panic beliefs.

[00:28:58.720] - Beth

Yeah, we were When we're talking about this, where it's like, how do you present credible pushback in a book without making it feel like it's the author's mouthpiece? And I think you had a good solution, where it's like you have Winter and Silence, who are connected to the working class, and it would be like, Hey, bread costs so much money right now.

[00:29:18.360] - Emma

Something like that. And I bring this up a lot when people do... When they do that wallpapery thing where a Duke is suddenly woke and an abolitionist and all these things. I'm like, Well, all these... And I think it's true. All these people, all these time periods had people who had these beliefs. They just weren't necessarily dukes. And so I think it would make sense for Silence and Winter to be like, Hey, the thing that these people need is not someone getting rid of the gin distillery, it's someone paying them a living wage, which I think people in the working classes, the people who are trying to unionize at the alehouses, are aware of what they need. They're not idiots. And there's a few moments in the book where we felt like Hero almost gets there, like she's almost interrogating this thing, because the big moral question is, Griff makes money off of the gin, but this is sustaining the ennobled family of the Mandeville Reddings. But Thomas doesn't question where the money comes from. When she discovers that Griffin has a gin distillery, she's like, Does Thomas know? He's like, Thomas doesn't care to ask.

[00:30:24.310] - Emma

Thomas doesn't care about where my money comes from. She realizes that Thomas is maybe as immoral as Griffin, or even more so because he's a coward about asking where the money is coming from. And so she almost gets to this place of understanding with the noble class is not caring about what enriches them, which I think is an interesting commentary, again, of the Georgian period extracting wealth from the East India Company, the Royal African Company. That's all adjacent to this, but we're not there. And also, I think the way that the book concludes belies any progressive conclusion about where these people's money should or would, where it should come from.

[00:31:03.710] - Beth

Right. As you pointed out a few times, Griffin's like, child labor? Should I go that route?

[00:31:09.330] - Emma

This is my big beef with the book, and it's like people... This is my big beef with all the goodreads reviews. I guess it's a blink and you miss it because Beth did miss it.

[00:31:17.290] - Beth

I was like, well, I knew it was in there because you told me, but I remember reading through it and I was like, Where was the child labor again? And it's like...

[00:31:24.820] - Emma

So the reason that Griffin has to make gin is because he has bad grain. The grain can't be used for wheat, so it's used for gin. And his compatriot in the gin making process, who eventually gets shot when he's buying pickled eels, is like, Well, you know what works well on land that isn't good for wheat? You could graze sheep. Sheep do well on rocky land. And Griffin's like, Well, what do I do with the sheep? And he's like, Well, you get wool, and then you spin it. And Griffin's like, Well, who's going to spin the wool? He's like, Well, children or women are good at it. And Griffin thinks to himself, there may be a new supply of children that could do this. And the children he's thinking of are the gin orphans. And so he invents... This is how he's making money at the end of the book. He's invented a child labor sweatshop of... Again, in modernity, we're moving towards industry And this is the moral solution offered by the book, is that he's no longer a gin distiller. He's a sweatshop owner.

[00:32:22.090] - Beth

I love how it's phrased in the book. There was a growing demand for wool and cloth in London, both for export and to clothe its population. And as for children to spin the wool, there might be a ready source nearby. Yes. Like just something he needs to tap. Like they're just ready and willing. Right.

[00:32:39.920] - Emma

It's just like, okay, this is this. So That is the thing that makes this book like a three stars for me because I really do enjoy the romance. When I read that line, I was like, What? But yeah, all the pushback and the hatred of gin, it's a bizarre experience to read a book where the moral harm is something that our society in 2025 has basically resolved. People drink gin now. Even if you're anti-alcohol, alcohol is alcohol. So it's, again, pushing gin out, specifically. It's a very weird experience. I think Maximus sounds like he needs a martini.

[00:33:18.530] - Beth

Yeah.

[00:33:18.740] - Emma

And just calm down.

[00:33:21.350] - Beth

But he's Batman. So when we were texting while reading this book, I'm going to send me a screenshot. She's like, I forgot how literally it is like Batman because both their parents die outside of theater.

[00:33:33.610] - Emma

Which is how Batman's parents died.

[00:33:35.130] - Beth

Which is how Batman's parents died. But when is Maximus's book? I thought he would be... Is he one of the ghosts of St. Giles? Yes. Is he the... I think he's Book 6. I think he's Book 6. Yeah. Yeah. Okay.

[00:33:46.780] - Emma

So it's him, Winter, and Godric, who we've not met in this book, are the Ghost of St. Giles. It's like the Dread Pirate Roberts, where they're multiple ones of them, and they all have a... I don't remember the details of it. There's a leader who trained them in martial arts, I think.

[00:34:05.460] - Beth

That's a superhero thing. There's been multiple guys who've been Batman. Like, yes, it's Bruce Wayne, but there's other offshoots and universes or whatever.

[00:34:14.880] - Emma

Yeah. It's quite... Yeah, the back to this, this origin story is very literally Batman, and the other two are more... I don't remember how they got involved with the Harlequin aspect, but that's how they were like, Where is he going to be? Who is he? And they're able to deny who's who because it's like, they'll show up and be like, He was just here. And it's like, well, it was the other one.

[00:34:34.980] - Beth

Right, exactly. I only have this point as just wigs because we're pro-wig on this podcast. We want more wigs. I think when we read Scarlett Peckham.

[00:34:48.750] - Emma

Yeah, that's another author who does Georgians. Yeah.

[00:34:51.370] - Beth

Yeah, she did a trilogy of Georgians. And yeah, we love the clothes. I I have found this interview with Elizabeth Hoyt from riskyregencies. Com. So the question is, what's a few of your favorite things about writing historicals? Is it the clothes, exciting history, gender roles, the cool shoes, or something else? And Hoyt responded, clothes. Definitely the clothes. Big, walking skirts, some of them worn by women. Also, wigs. Why aren't wigs worn by men anymore? We have entered a very boring time for men's fashion in general.

[00:35:32.300] - Emma

The wigs sent me. So the first time, I think I told the story on the podcast before, but the first Hoyt I read was Lord of Darkness, which is also in the series. And she absolutely mentions, I checked today. I was like, She mentions wigs in that book before the scene where this happens. But the first time the couple has sex, there's a part where the hero, doffed his wig and laid it on the dressing table. And I had to stare at a wall for a second because I did not, I didn't realize that he had been wearing a wig the whole time. It was the The first book I read where someone was wearing a wig, I was like, Oh, my God, it's Georgian. He's been wearing a powder wig the whole book, and I've not thought about it. But I've come around on it. I've no longer scared of the wigs. But I think this book is a good example of what you can do with different costuming in periods, especially if you're writing something where there's not a whole lot of codified ways you talk about the costume, like the corset or something.

[00:36:21.050] - Emma

We all know what happens in a corset scene. But in this book, Hero takes off Griffin's wig in the carriage as he's kissing her breast, and she thinks she wanted a private part of him, too, if only a little bit. And so I think that's a great historical romance detail because it's eroticizing something that would have been very private in the time period. She probably has never seen another adult man with his wig off. It would be very intimate for him to take off his wig. It's like an un-formaling of him.

[00:36:48.150] - Beth

Yeah, even her brother, unsurprisingly, he's always wearing the perfect white powdered wig. I don't think she hardly sees him either without a wig on.

[00:36:57.850] - Emma

It works so well. It's like, Oh, yeah, that's something that would not be remotely erotic in a lot of other time periods. Even in the Regency, when wigs fall out of fashion, we don't have that anymore. It's this thing that is so... It's such a good detail for the period that I like that she included that.

[00:37:12.490] - Beth

I did want to talk a bit about how they meet. I love this meeting. I think, swing big. It's like when Beverly Jenkins... Is it Destiny's Surrender?

[00:37:24.270] - Emma

Yeah, she starts like she's having an orgasm on the first page.

[00:37:25.920] - Beth

It starts like the first line is like, Famously, she has an orgasm. I'm like, Yes, let's do more things like that.

[00:37:33.100] - Emma

In media res.

[00:37:34.370] - Beth

Yeah, literally. So this is from the book, literally reading the first sentence. The daughter of a Duke learns early in life the proper etiquette for nearly everything. What dish to serve, roast larks in, when to acknowledge a rather risque dowage or countess, and when to give her the cut direct, what to wear while boating down the Thames, and how to fend off the tipsy advances of an earl with very little income at the picnic afterward. Everything, in fact, Lady Hero Batten reflected rightly. But how to address a gentleman coupling vigorously with a married lady, not his own. So this actually goes on for a few pages.

[00:38:17.220] - Emma

Yeah, he does not stop when he realizes she's there.

[00:38:19.770] - Beth

I think it's interesting that she tries to get his attention, because I feel like if it were me, I would be like, Hey, to the woman, I'd be like, I am right here.

[00:38:28.890] - Emma

Yeah, hello. It's Because she's looking at his backside. So she throws her earring at his butt. I do like the earring. The earring is like a recurring totem. It's nice. I like that thing.

[00:38:44.180] - Beth

Yeah, he brings it up After... I feel like he wants the relationship to be more, and he brings the earring in. He's in front of everyone. He's like, Can anyone tell me whose earring this is? The hero is like, What are you doing? So what do What do you think of this?

[00:39:01.090] - Emma

Yeah. So this, I think, when I read this book, I was like, Oh, I locked into this book. And I was like, again, this is, I think probably would have been a five-star book for 90% of the book because I was so enamored with the way this book opens. So often with Rakes, we don't see them raking, which is a problem that I have with it. We talk about this in our Taxonomy of Rakes episode, where the book sometimes starts with him having the attitude of, I'm turning over a new leaf. I'm done with opera singers now, like Anthony Bridgerton, where they're not doing anything bad. It's like, Okay, how are you actually rake-ish? Are you just... And it's like, not only is Griffin currently doing it, he's doing something that is actually something that you probably shouldn't be doing. You should be having an affair with a married woman. It's not just like you're having sex with another consensual adult or something that's like, Okay, you're just... Like society rake. He's doing something bad. And I also like the rakes. I think it makes more sense for a rake to be in this late 17th century, early 18th century period, because that is a trope as much older than the Regency period because it originates in a Georgian theater, a restoration theater and into Georgian theater.

[00:40:07.910] - Emma

A rake was something that men wanted to be, but also was this scary figure as a space of sin. So you have Casanova and the Marquis de Sades or the British examples like George Villiers. I think, historically, the Regency type of dude, it's much more like the self-indulgent dandy. This is like Beau Brummell is who we think of. The Lord Byron is a Regency rake. But I think modern authors are really afraid of feminine heroes. We don't actually get a lot of dandies in romance. I think Mary Balogh writes a few dandies and of course, Georgette Heyer. But as far as 2020's Regency heroes, we're not getting dandies anymore. But the 1730s, a rake makes very much sense as the guy here, the bad guy or the anti-hero. I think it's important to see him actually indulging because this is not the romantic period or the romanticism of the Regency into the 1830s and the romanticism of, Oh, we're going to romanticize the rake. Rakes make the best husband, the aphorism. This is like a rake. Rake is still someone that you don't want to be around. So Hero's distance from him and her skepticism of him And her intrigue of him, I think, is very historically appropriate for how she interacts with this trope.

[00:41:22.460] - Beth

Oh, sorry. I was just saying, I also love that the reason that she... It's not even just that he is famously known to seduce women. It's like he seduced Thomas's wife. Yes. So it's like... It just adds an extra layer of scoundrel on him, even though we find out later he didn't actually do anything.

[00:41:44.940] - Emma

Right. So when she hears the gossip, when Thomas tells her why he doesn't want to talk, why he's not close with his brother, she's like, Oh, that makes sense. I saw him with a married woman. It shapes her perception of him in relation to Thomas. And I think also makes her more interested in him because it's like he's a successful seducer. There's so many times where she approaches him and puts herself in situations where she gets to think, Oh, no. I didn't mean to be in the carriage with a Rake who won't stop staring at me. But who am I to stop him?

[00:42:11.650] - Beth

I just wanted something to tell you. I just wanted to tell you something and show up at your house like, Oh, no, we're having sex now.

[00:42:17.780] - Emma

Like showing up. And it's like, yeah, it's like what it says on the tin. You walked in on him having sex with a married woman. You're a woman who is spoken for. And he is flirting with you. I think Hero is deeply interested in sex, and it's like his opening behavior allows her to explore that with him, I think in a very reasonable, or it makes sense in a universe way. Even though she's lady perfect, she knows that this door is open, very early, which I think works for her characterization.

[00:42:50.060] - Beth

Yeah. Also, we talked about this before we were recording, too. Like a Kleypas character, I feel is deeply interested in her hero, is obsessed with him. But when it comes to the sex part, I never feel like she is feral for him. But I feel like Hero is feral for Griffin.

[00:43:09.130] - Emma

Yeah, I think she's interested in sex before she's interested in Griffin. She's like, this is a thing that I could explore here. And I maybe know I shouldn't. But there are moments where she thinks, this may be my only chance to have sex that's sexy. She's like, this is going to be my... She knows that she characterizes this relationship as her most intimate relationship, even though she's about to get married. She's like, I know that that relationship will not have sex like this in it at any point. That's not what this is for. I think she's just deeply interested in exploring this side of her that Griffin has unlocked. I think also probably her marriage or her impending marriage is making her to realize, Oh, I have a timeline where I need to get this done before I get married because I know that the door will be closed for me there.

[00:43:57.570] - Beth

Yeah, I think early on in the book, there's this paragraph where Thomas... Or it's from Hero's point of view, and Thomas asks her several times, Are you content? And she makes the note, he never asks me if I'm happy. He just asks if I'm content. So I think she is resigned When she... So their first sex scene is in the carriage, right?

[00:44:21.570] - Emma

Yeah, I think that's the first time they... Because they kiss and then it's the carriage.

[00:44:27.160] - Beth

Okay. And then the second time they have sex, it's penetrative sex. And there is this moment where she's like, It happened. I'm not a virgin anymore. And then it cuts to black.

[00:44:37.310] - Emma

It goes to another scene.

[00:44:38.850] - Beth

The first time I read it, I was like, I feel like she doesn't care about being a virgin. I think she doesn't actually care that much. But to be fair, I think virginity is put on people as so important. So you would still maybe have feelings about it, even if you were like, I don't actually care that much about it, if that makes sense. Yeah.

[00:44:57.990] - Emma

And I think this book is an interesting relationship. Again, I feel like this is very Hoyt in that she doesn't take received wisdom from other genre books. This keeps her from the wallpaper category because I do think sometimes books will have a projected concept of how important virginity is to these people. It's like, obviously, there were people who weren't virgins getting married in the Georgian and Regency period. If it was a marriage of convenience, maybe you do the calculus in your head and you're like, I'm okay with doing this, even though she's told me that she's not a virgin. Or there are reasons that people couldn't... Also, virginity is a construct, one, but also these women are riding horses all the time. We don't know if they're going to bleed. There are lots of ways to get around this. And so this Victorian conception of being a virgin is the utmost important thing for you. I think sometimes people are projecting that back onto the 18th century in an unfair way. And so I think Hero is very pragmatic about it. She's just like, this is...

[00:45:59.040] - Beth

Also because the people around her don't seem that concerned that she's lost her virginity. They're just like, Stop. Whatever's happening with him, don't do it anymore.

[00:46:06.620] - Emma

Her brother doesn't care. He's like, You can still get married to Thomas, which is what we need you to do.

[00:46:11.660] - Beth

Yeah, he cares about it because he wants the alliance. He's not like, Oh, you're ruined. Who will take you now? He's just like, I set this up. It's going to be very good for me.

[00:46:21.530] - Emma

That's what he's angry about. Stop doing what you're doing. I don't want to know what you're doing, but stop doing it.

[00:46:24.960] - Beth

But in a sibling way that I don't want to know what you're doing.

[00:46:29.340] - Emma

Right. And even I think Thomas doesn't necessarily care that she's not a virgin. He cares that she's fallen in love with Griffin because he's jealous of Griffin.

[00:46:36.340] - Beth

Yeah, it's like his exact pain point.

[00:46:37.760] - Emma

If it had been any other man, he would have been like, whatever. I'm not in love with you. I'm in love with Lavinia. It's fine.

[00:46:45.730] - Beth

Maybe we could work something out. You could see that guy. I'll see Lavinia if I could convince her. Let's talk a little bit about Thomas since we're already talking about him. Sometimes I don't like a cheating situation with a person getting cheated on is in love with someone else, just because I feel like it lessens the stakes. I think it can still be interesting, and I think white does an interesting thing here, so I might have to reevaluate this feeling. As we talked about, they have this This marriage is good for us. Thomas has these political aspirations. She'll be a good wife for that. But I love how desperately Thomas wants and watches Lavinia. She's very practical, and she holds herself back a bit because she's like, he's going to marry this girl, and I don't sleep with married men. And this exchange sums up their entire dynamic, and I loved it. So this is Thomas speaking. I can't marry you. Damn you, he snarled. He knew he wasn't charming anymore, wasn't anything but ugly, but he couldn't prevaricate. The emotion welled up in him too strongly. I know you can't marry me, she said, sounding almost bored.

[00:48:00.020] - Beth

But that doesn't mean I can't marry some other gentleman. His head jerked back, the blow more painful than his brother's fist. You will not. She raised her eyebrows. Why ever not? You have no claim on me. Damn you, he hist. He threw aside the silly cloth and kissed her with all the desperation of a man with a torn and bloodied heart. She's so cool. Yeah, she's awesome. Just bored.

[00:48:25.030] - Emma

Also, earnestly likes Thomas. She really is in love with him, which is nice to see.

[00:48:31.930] - Beth

Yeah, so to back up a bit. So this makes this interaction makes Thomas more likable and more human. And I think it's good because he does slap. It's a strike in the book, but he slaps Hero in the face after she tells him that, Hey, I slept with your brother. And I could see in another book that Thomas would be the big bad.

[00:48:54.130] - Emma

We never talk to him again. We're cutting him off. Yeah.

[00:48:57.680] - Beth

Yeah. Clearly, Hero was in the right. She knew something in her gut, blah, blah, blah. And just all the bad traits piled on this man. But no. That hero confesses to sleeping with Griffin, as we talk about, is just right at the heart of Thomas's jealousy about how his first wife had a crush on Griffin. And he's just jealous of Griffin in general. He is charming, and people do like him. And I don't think that thing comes naturally to Thomas. And everyone gossip and assumes Griffin seduced his wife. And it's something you also believe, but it still would I think, that people generally believe that about your brother or think that about your marriage. So I just I like everything that's going on here.

[00:49:39.420] - Emma

Yeah, I have a little bit that I didn't think about this for our cheating episode, because I think we struggled in that episode to think of examples where the woman is cheating on her partner because it doesn't happen that often. I don't really know why they think it. No, it doesn't. We had what Bayley's one book, the Sophie Jordan book.

[00:49:54.930] - Beth

Which was a terrible book.

[00:49:55.790] - Emma

But I also think it's a testament to a good cheating book that you don't really think about it being cheating, or I don't think about it being cheating because I'm like, Okay, whatever. She's not flashing it. Hero doesn't really have a whole lot of moral qualms about sleeping with Griffin. She doesn't see it as a betrayal to Thomas because really, I think Thomas, again, feels the betrayal because it's Griffin, not because she slept for someone else. I think he's at moments, you believe that he's happy to continue with the marriage. He's like, You slept for someone else. We'll cut off Thomas or we'll cut off Griffin. It's fine. But I think for Thomas, I did see people getting mad at Thomas for hitting Hero, and they're not being a bigger compeuppance. There's a line in the last chapter where she forgives him because he buys her a beautiful necklace. She tells... Like, Griffin's still holding a grudge. She's like, He slapped you. That's the reason I don't want to go see him and make peace. And she's like, well, I've forgiven him. He gave me a beautiful necklace. But I think it's clear, unlike the jinn stuff, I think on the personal level, it's clear that the book is not arguing that he should have hit her, or We're not endorsing him hitting her.

[00:51:01.700] - Emma

It's a bad thing for him to do.

[00:51:03.060] - Beth

No. But immediately like, Yeah, that was well-deserved. But also she still sees him as a person, so she...

[00:51:09.810] - Emma

Thomas and Hero are not in a committed relationship to each other. They don't need this level of trust where she trusts he'll never hit her again or anything. That doesn't need to be established. So I'm okay with the off-hand remark where it's like, Oh, I'm forgiving him because he gave me a necklace. Because they're not in a relationship anymore. So she's not afraid of him. We're not in this danger, like a bodice ripper, where you feel like you need this whole big arc to get to the satisfying ending of like, Okay, we trust this relationship now.

[00:51:42.310] - Beth

And I think- Yeah, the sticking together doesn't matter in this instance, because the relationship now is basically brother and sister.

[00:51:50.180] - Emma

He's not hitting her to demonstrate his power. He's not hitting her to do any of these things that are abusive. He's hitting her because he's angry at her. It's I think there is a distinction there. And I like that, again, that it's like, Thomas is not good or bad. He is complicated. And I think that's also true of a lot of the characters Hoyt writes. And I think ultimately, Hero consistently shown to be pragmatic. And I think even telling Thomas so directly about her affair is pragmatic. She's trying to get him to refuse to marry her. She starts by couching it, and he's like, It's fine. She said, I'm no longer a virgin. And he's like, Whatever, I don't care. And then she's like, I'm in love with Griffin. He doesn't care. He's like, The fact that she slept with Griffin is the problem. Because otherwise, Maximus will force the marriage. She's like, In order to get out of this, I need to push him. She pushes him and then gets literally pushed back. I think it makes sense in the book. I think it's not fine, but it is good writing. I think it makes sense for the characters.

[00:52:54.870] - Emma

That's not the thing that remotely gives me any quibbles in the book because I just think it makes sense in her universe. Also, I think the other thing that makes him really sympathetic is how he talks about his stillborn daughter. Those things are very moving, I think, when he remembers Anna or Anne, and he talks about... He talks about he was like, he assumes that the memories will have faded. And he's like, the memories of Anne have faded because he wasn't in love with her. He was like, again, like this society marriage, and he's mostly just angry at her for being in love with Griffin. But he's like, I don't really remember Anne. What I remember is the body of his stillborn daughter. And those Those passages, I think, are really like, insight into Thomas, who we think is a buffoon. No, he has deep feelings, and this was a very harrowing event for him. But then the rumors between Griffin and Anne, and the lack of belief that he can have in his brother, has also not given him the chance to privately mourn the loss because he's just angry at Griffin or it has all these other feelings.

[00:53:53.350] - Emma

It's like he has this deep-seated sadness about the loss of his daughter that is so because he's just so angry.

[00:54:02.460] - Beth

Yeah. And to be fair to Thomas, I think Thomas does know deep down, which is said in the book that Griffin didn't actually seduce the wife, but it does not help that Griffin did flirt with her. Right. Yes.

[00:54:14.560] - Emma

Yeah. Griffin's like, I didn't know she was going to... I don't know if he says this, but he's like, I didn't know she was going to die. I didn't know this was going to be a sticking point, that our relationship was going to end over this. And also, I don't think it's ever clear why Anne tells Thomas that she slept with- Yeah, maybe she just didn't like him or something. She's angry, or maybe she's angry that she's dying. She's in childbirth and knows she's going to die because it's so painful and her daughter's dying. She's just acting out. It's unclear. That's one of the things that goes... That's more of a point where it's like, that goes unexplored. And it's like, That's more what I have a question about than Thomas hitting Hero, which I feel like is wrapped up neatly and makes sense.

[00:54:58.290] - Beth

Right. And we've been talking about this nuanced approach that Hoyt will take to characters. And I wanted to talk a bit about... I feel like she has characters with a code and then has them challenge that code. I'm referencing another interview she did. It wasn't about this book, but I felt like it applied. So in a Publishers Weekly interview from September ninth, 2011, Cheri Melnik asked Hoyt, What led you to focus on this particular odd couple? This question is about scandalous desires. Hoyt responded, I like the hero and heroine of my romance is to challenge each other. Who better to challenge a pirate used to having his own way than a strong, morally-minded woman? And who better to challenge her beliefs than a man who has never marched to society's dictates? Likewise, we have the rake and the Proper Lady. It's summed up in the names that they give each other. He calls her Lady Perfect, and she calls him Lord Shameless. She is the patron of an orphanage, and he distills gin. She's making a nice society marriage, and he sleeps with married women. I don't think Hoyt is doing anything unusual. In fact, I think this is what most writers do.

[00:56:04.780] - Beth

Just think of any buddy cop movie. You have the straight-laced guy who's following the rules by the book, and then you have the wild card who's just going by his gut feeling. So I guess my question to you is, how well do you think Hoyt executes this dynamic? And we've been talking about it.

[00:56:22.870] - Emma

Yeah. I mean, so I was telling Beth when we were reading the book that I think Hoyt's... I'm guessing in Hoyt's method, after the fact of having read a couple of these books, I think she basically invents a guy, and then she thinks of the woman who's going to turn his world upside down or the inverse. Things need to be totally turned over by the end of the book. And I think that's one of her philosophies of romance. And so it's opposite six track to an extreme. And it's like, that's a very well-practiced mode for her because I think she's just always writing it. Yeah, I think more than anything, I think Hoyt is interested in sex. I think this is how people sell her books to other people. It's like if you are pitching a book to... Pitching a Hoyt book to someone, you would be like, There's a lot of sex in it. It's good sex scenes. I think even more than most of her peers. We were talking before the podcast starts, this couple has sex a lot. For a couple who is like, should not be... Society does not want them to be having sex together.

[00:57:10.890] - Emma

There are a lot of sex scenes in this book. There's It's just two sex scenes that are almost identical. She goes over to his house twice.

[00:57:19.970] - Beth

She's like, I need to tell you something at both times. It's like a cover. I have to tell you something. And then they have sex, and he's like, What did you want to? What did you want to be talking about?

[00:57:30.050] - Emma

I think even in the books that I'm less interested in or I vibe with less, she's writing interesting sex scenes, and I think there are ones that are tailored to the characters. I think that mode requires a lot of tension. I rag on Kleypas a lot for... I think she has rote sex scenes. I'm not particularly interested in Kleypas sex scenes. I think most of them follow a formula. I don't think that's true of Hoyt. And so every time- They're in Carriages so much in this book, and they have a carriage sex scene, so it makes a lot of sense. I pitch this book as, I do love the carriage sex I think it's really hot. And that's probably one of my favorite sex scenes in romance. I love that scene.

[00:58:07.040] - Beth

Yeah, it's done well.

[00:58:08.760] - Emma

But every time I read this book, I think at the beginning, when you were introduced to Hero, I was like, How does Hero actually end up being physical with Griffin? I think I've read it twice, maybe. I guess I've read it once a year since I started reading romance. I always forget because it seems really out of character when we first meet her, that she's okay with being physical with him. And then I looked back on it. And so it's actually a little ambiguous what's happening in the scene. They're at the Pleasure Garden. He's found her alone, and he grabs her arm, and she says Thomas's name when it happens upon her. And she does flirty eyes at him in the moment, and they're in the dark, and they're both wearing Venetian mask, and he kisses her. And so up until that point, she thinks he's Thomas, I think. And they do look enough alike that this is possible, especially when they're wearing masks. But then by the time we jump back into Hero's head, she thinks, Hero had wanted to know how Redding tasted, and now she knew. And Redding is Griffin, not Thomas.

[00:59:01.580] - Emma

I think also here, we see maybe Hero's defining trait is curiosity. She has this tension between her pragmatism and her curiosity. I think this is what gets her involved in her charity work, which we were talking about, too. It's this lady bountiful trope that I think I'm a little bit more sympathetic to here because I think she could be doing something more- You're more sympathetic.

[00:59:20.590] - Beth

I think it personally annoys me just having... I'm a rich person with my little charity, but it is... This is what rich women did.

[00:59:28.700] - Emma

You had your little charity. But she could be doing something a lot more hands off. When the architect runs away, she's like, Okay, we are getting a new architect. We're getting a new building. We're actually doing this. And she is willing to take a loan from Griffin. She's doing all these things that are putting her in... She's a little bit more hands-on. I think she's curious about how the house functions. She's interested in silences work. But like when... So later, during the carriage scene, when she's giving Griffin a handjob in the carriage, she has this thought where she occurred that she might never share a moment as intimate as this again with another human being because she's entering this society, marriage of convenience. And I think that curiosity about sex, I think that's what Hoyt writes really well with Hero. And I think that's believable because of the tension that she has with Griffin, which is like a roundabout way to talk about their attention. But she is lady perfect. She's so invested in rules, but he like, awakened this curiosity in her.

[01:00:23.750] - Beth

When we talk about how we love Starchy Duke getting unstarched. So, yeah, I don't know if this is the equivalent to that or similar... But it has a similar feel. She becomes unstarched in a way. She lets go.

[01:00:41.570] - Emma

Yeah, I think it works because her emotional unstarched searching doesn't happen until the end of the book. She's being seduced, but she's not really being... He thinks he's seducing her, but she's much more of an active participant in the seduction.

[01:00:54.550] - Beth

She's like, Do I love you? I don't know. I have feelings for you. I'm like, Wow, okay.

[01:00:59.280] - Emma

She's She's putting herself in situations of being like, Oh, no, we're kissing again. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm also talking about this before the podcast started. I think I often remember Hoi doing things that she doesn't actually do because I think she plays with tropes, and then there's pieces of information missing. So Griffin doesn't really have... He doesn't have the scene where he's like, Oh, my God, I've seduced a virgin. What do I do? He doesn't have that... Until they have sex, penetrative sex, he's not thinking, You shouldn't marry my brother. He's like, This is a fun time. He doesn't have these qualms that are so typical of the moral quandary of couching. Okay, we're doing something bad, but we got to catch ourselves. Griffin doesn't putter or stumble in his seduction of hero, which feels like a throwback compared to heroes who do lip service. Like, Oh, I'll leave you a virgin or remind you of the consequences before we have sex. He wants to have sex with her. She wants to have sex with him, so they have sex. It's like they're maybe being a little thoughtless, but also I think that's accurate to when two people are really horny.

[01:01:59.450] - Emma

Like, this This is what happens. People are not necessarily thinking with their heads, which he says. He's like, I was thinking with my other head at one point. But then it's also like when he does get there, when he's like, I don't want you to marry Thomas. Hero sees in him, she's like, Oh, my God, he's being very vulnerable right now. And that's scaring her more than the sex is. She's like, oh, this is scary. I don't know if I have feelings for him. Because that's not a question she's been asking. She's like, it's not on the table for her because she's going to marry That's the plan.

[01:02:31.820] - Beth

Also, there's a part in the book where she has... I think Maximus is still... It's like after she's revealed to Thomas that she slept with Griffin and everything's happened, and Maximus is like, No, you're still doing it. And Griffin is like, Why are you still doing this? She's like, He is my only family. I'm not going to alienate my only family that I have left. So I really like that moment because I think it's a that you might consciously know, but sometimes it is good to have unconsciously know. But it's nice for a character to literally voice it. Because I, too, was like, Girl, go for this guy. But it makes sense why she doesn't.

[01:03:16.390] - Emma

I think what gets said and what doesn't get said, it's one of the things that keeps Hoyt interesting is because... When I talked about the Raven prince, where I was like, no book has ever made me say what more? Because I was like, the characters are not saying things that I'm predicting them that they're going to say. And I was like, I read a lot historical romances. Sometimes they become really rote and predictable. But this is both emotions and plot. Because you can have a bonkers plot, but sometimes it's like, okay, you're just inventing things happening. But when people are emotionally surprising, that's exciting to me. And I think that's what Hoyt does.

[01:03:48.810] - Beth

Next section I called Lisa Kleypas Style Subplots. To be fair to Hoyt, this did hook me onto the next couple, so I didn't I even mention this in my plot summary. It's like Silence and Mickey, the pirate.

[01:04:06.550] - Emma

Yes, he's a river pirate. He's specifically on the Thames. Like he's just going up and down the Thames.

[01:04:12.090] - Beth

Yeah. There's whole scenes with her, and you learn that she went to Mickey. I don't... Did her husband owe him some money or something? I don't know. So she goes to him and everyone thinks, and he makes her stay a night. So everyone thinks that she sold... That she did some... I don't know how to phrase this. I guess she slept with him to save her husband, basically. For money, yeah. For money. Her husband is very distant. She gets a letter where she thinks to herself like, oh, there's none of our inside jokes or anything like that. But this, to be fair, hooked me on the next book. And I'm mad because I feel like what was happening in this book was more interesting than the next book. And I hated how Hoyt was making it. I think I wish they had had actually... Like they had had sex. Like that had actually happened. Her husband was legitimately angry at her. I don't know if she just maybe didn't want to do two cheating books back to back. But I felt like, to me, maybe other people feel differently or you feel differently. But to me, that's 10 times more interesting.

[01:05:25.200] - Beth

She does seem in love with her husband, but She just has this night with a guy that she can't seem to forget.

[01:05:32.780] - Emma

Yeah, the option is her husband dying or sleeping with someone else to pay off his debt. I was like, that feels like a very classic literature trope of I'm going to take care of this.

[01:05:42.630] - Beth

And it's studio consent. I like that. I'm like, I think you should have leaned into that more. What ends up happening? I just read the first part of the book. He makes her look ravished, and then he has her walk home. And he tells her, If your husband loves you, he will believe you. And I was like, I don't know about that.

[01:06:00.010] - Emma

Is the next book like dual timeline? We go back and see the- I don't remember.

[01:06:04.840] - Beth

I'm like, I was like... Because you were like, Oh, her book's disappointing. I was like, I'm going to skip to the next one.

[01:06:10.280] - Emma

Because I had the same experience when I read this book. I was like, I'm so excited for Silence and Mickey's book. And I was like, I'm not crazy about this. But yeah, she does this. And reading these books, I'm always surprised how much she fits into them. Because I don't feel like Griffin and Hero's romance is shorted. I feel like it's a complete story. But we get all...half the book is silence. And then the other part is the mystery with the gin distiller informers. That's like the...

[01:06:38.910] - Beth

Yeah, like the vicar. That's a bigger thing.

[01:06:41.330] - Emma

There's this whole mystery plot that's going on. I think that's pretty typical of her book. So there's the romance, there's a mystery, and then there's the nesting of the other story. I've not read the first book, Wicked Intentions, and I've never thought about the fact that Griffin and Hero are probably characters in that book. I wonder how my relationship to this book would change if I had read Wicked Intentions. I don't know. What is the background of that? Do we see Griffin and Anne? I don't know. I just have not thought about it. I don't think my library has that one, so I've never read it. Is that why you didn't read it? Yeah, it starts with this one, so I never read Wicked Intentions, which is- It sounds interesting.

[01:07:18.300] - Beth

I feel like I remember reading it and thought that maybe you hadn't liked it because I was like, Well, the plot seems interesting, but Emma didn't read it, so maybe it's not good.

[01:07:24.650] - Emma

I don't remember who it is. Oh, it's the other sister. It's the other Makepeace sister who becomes- Temperance?

[01:07:30.330] - Beth

Yeah, she- Oh, a shout out to all the names in these books. By the way, Silence, top tier name. Winter Makepeace, perfect. Like, even Hero, love it.

[01:07:39.040] - Emma

I love Hero. I was like, this is such a cute name. For a little girl, Hero, I think it's so cute.

[01:07:43.420] - Beth

I love it. It's like a Shakespeare Is that a Shakespearen name? I'm pro if anyone wants to name their baby that.

[01:07:49.590] - Emma

Yeah, great name.

[01:07:51.370] - Beth

It's Lord Clere. Oh, yeah. He has reference because they've left the country.

[01:07:55.360] - Emma

They're on a honeymoon, and I guess they come back later.

[01:07:58.850] - Beth

He wants her help to navigate. So Clere makes a simple offer in return for Temperance help navigating the perilous alleys of St. Giles. He will introduce her to London's High Society so that she can find a benefactor for the home.

[01:08:12.780] - Emma

Okay. I pulled this up on Goodreads to see if I remembered anything about it, but I haven't read it, so I don't really... I was trying to figure out the character's names. But someone compares the series to the Kerrigan Byrne, Victorian Rebels series. This book, this series is better than Victorian Rebels. I'm going to put my foot down on that. It's better than the Kerrigan Byrne series.

[01:08:33.190] - Beth

That's the reformed rakes final say on that. Yeah.

[01:08:36.870] - Emma

I really do want to... I shouldn't read all these, but I just... Yeah, this book is... The way that she handles all the plots is fascinating, but it's like... So that's like a Kleypas hallmark, which I think also maybe to her detriment, sometimes she puts sometimes the best... She's good at setting up a romance, and so sometimes the setup is more interesting than the follow-up. I think Cat and Leo's book is like that, where the more interesting stuff happens in the second book, like their discoveries in the other book, which isn't as good. So you just have to read the Leo and Cat scenes.

[01:09:11.600] - Beth

That's the same with the Marrying Winterborne. Yeah, all All the interesting scenes are in the first book, Cold-Hearded Rake.

[01:09:18.350] - Emma

Like the orchid. It's interesting because Kleypas is so repetitive. The Leo and Cat relationship. And what is it Leo and Cat? No, no. So The book that Leo and Cat are the subplot in, that book, that relationship is very, very similar to the Marrying Winterbourne relationship. It's like there's an injury, and there's a keeping of an object as a care as a big brute, and he's like, A tiny lady. I'm too big for her. So it's the parallels across Kleypas and her repetitive series.

[01:09:55.120] - Beth

Yes. Okay. I'm glad I read this book. I haven't read Hoyt for I don't know why I haven't picked her up before now.

[01:10:03.100] - Emma

You should read the Leopard Prince. That's the other... If you want a recommendation, that's the one... That's probably my other favorite one is the Leopard Prince, but it's because the hero is a farmer, which you know I love.

[01:10:12.850] - Beth

I know you love farmers. They're so likable.

[01:10:16.540] - Emma

He's a farmer, and she hires him as a steward. So she's like an aristocrat, and he's a steward, which I just love. There's also someone's murdering sheep, and that's the mystery, is someone's killing all the sheep.

[01:10:28.730] - Beth

That's a manageable mystery that I could be somewhat invested in. Okay, thank you so much for listening to Reformed Rakes. If you like bonus content, you can subscribe to our Patreon at patreon. Com/reformedrakes. You can follow us on Twitter, Blue Sky, and Instagram for show updates. The username for those platforms is at reformedrakes, or 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 we will see you next time.