Written on Your Skin

Show Notes

Meredith Duran has an unlikely publishing story: at her sister’s encouragement, she submitted her first manuscript, Duke of Shadows, to the Gather.com first chapters contest, and won first prize: Duke of Shadows would be published by Pocket Books. Duran followed up with Bound by Your Touch and Written on Your Skin, two late Victorian novels starring friends: Viscount Sanburne, the happy-go-lucky rake who uses his dissipation to conceal something much darker, and Phineas Granville, a spy-turned-earl who is drawn back into the game by a beautiful woman he’s indebted to. Duran’s one of Chels’s favorite historical romance authors, and she’s also the author Reformed Rakes listeners have most requested get a standalone episode. We’re very pleased that we can make that happen today.

Books Referenced

The Duke of Shadows by Meredith Duran

Bound by your Touch by Meredith Duran

A Lady’s Code of Misconduct by Meredith Duran

Sins of Lord Lockwood by Meredith Duran

Unmasked by the Marquess by Cat Sebastian

A Woman Entangled by Cecilia Grant

Forever & Ever by Patricia Gaffney

The Prince of Eden by Marilyn Harris

Think of England by KJ Charles

Works Cited

All About Romance Interview with Meredith Duran 2009

Kat Latham Interview with Meredith Duran 2012

Transcript

Chels

Welcome to Reformed Rakes, a historical romance podcast that drinks champagne to anesthetize our boredom. My name is Chels. I'm the writer of the romance newsletter The Loose Cravat, and a booktoker under the username Chels_ebooks.

Emma

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

Beth

I'm Beth. I'm a grad student, and I'm on Book Talk under the name bethhaymondreads.

Chels

Meredith Duran has an unlikely publishing story. At her sister's encouragement, she submitted her first manuscript, The Duke of Shadows, to the gather.com firstchapter's contest, and won first prize. The Duke of Shadows would be published by a major publisher, pocketbooks, owned by Simon & Schuster.

Chels

Duke of Shadows was something of a hard sell in 2009. The book, a Second Chance Romance that excoriates the violence of Colonialism, was a huge departure from the historical romance novels that were being published at the time. Since the 1970s, they had gradually become less political and more focused on the ballroom. The Duke of Shadows was met with critical acclaim and is regarded as a new classic.

Chels

The blog, Dear Author, called it a return to the Golden Age of Historical romance, and compared Meredith Duran to Judith Ivory, Patricia Gaffney, and Mary Joe Putney. Duran followed up with Bound by your Touch and Written on your Skin, two late Victorian novels starring Friends: Viscount Sandburne, the happy-go-lucky rake who uses his dissipation to conceal something much darker, and Phineas Granville, a spy-turned earl who is drawn back into the game by a beautiful woman he's indebted to.

Chels

Duran would go on to write nine more stand-alone full-length romance novels, the last being The Sins of Lord Lockwood, published in 2018. Most of her books are late Victorian, but they often leave England for huge swaths of the novel. While Duran can do Anguish extremely well, she also has a few rompy romance that still feel quite singular. She's one of my favorite historical romance authors, and she's also the author Reformed Rakes listeners have most requested get a standalone episode. I'm very pleased that we can make that happen today. We're going to be covering Written On Your Skin. So before we get into our talking points, I'm going to do a plot summary of the book.

Chels

Hong Kong, 1880, just past midnight. Phineas Granville is nursing a glass of brandy, thinking about the job he has to do when a whirlwind of a woman enters the room. She's small and dull-like, with white blonde hair and blue eyes, freakishly beautiful, but something of an airhead. Her name is Mina Masters, and Phin thinks to himself that she's lucky that she's so oblivious. Phin is spying for the British government, and Mina's stepfather, Gerard Collins, is an arms dealer and person person of interest. The less that Mina knows about Collins's occupation, the better. Phin is undercover, pretending to be a Chicagoan under the name of Mr. Monroe, casually flirting with Mina and ingratiating himself with her stepfather. All the while, he's plotting Colin's arrest. When Mina sees him at the bar, she barrels towards him, and Phin thinks to himself that he, quote, had no idea why his body had the bad taste to be fascinated by hers. She's flighty, irreverent, and extremely chatty, quote, She was artless in the way of children and puppies. Watching her, one found oneself braced for an accident. Puppies got stepped on. Children fell from windowsills. Ms. Masters was dancing at the edge of a cliff, and no one, not her wan, withdrawn mother, or even her tyrannical bastard of a stepfather, cared to leash her.

Chels

While his thoughts about Mina oscillate between being lewd and patronizing, Mina launches herself at Phin, catching him by surprise in a kiss. While he's still recovering from the shock of it, Mina begs him to dance with her. They're on the dance floor, and he notices that the music is too loud. He can't hear what she's saying, and her face is no longer in focus. Something is very, very wrong. Phin has been poisoned. He collapses on the dance floor, smacking Mina on the nose with his head. Mina is shocked at Phin's collapse, and a group of men sworn around her to take care of Phin, including Mr. Bonham. Bonham is another one of Mina's suitors, a self-made man from the colonies who was kind to street dogs but slapped his own servants. Bonham wants to ingratiate himself with Mina's stepfather, Mr. Collins, and Mina worries that Bonham will send Phin, who he views as competition, to a hospital where he can be quietly disposed of. Instead, Mina insists on having family take care of Phin and persuades Collins to have him brought up to his quarters to be cared for. Mina returns to her rooms where she finds her mother waiting.

Chels

Mina's mother was once a celebrated beauty, but her marriage to Collins is an unhappy one. Collins is abusive, and Mina longs for a way to get her and her mother out from under his thumb. Mina's mother tells her that Collins is angry at her again for something careless she said about Phin, who she thinks of as Mr. Monroe. In a conversation with her husband, she revealed that a newly arrived American from Chicago claimed not to have ever heard of a Mr. Monroe, which inexplicably made Collins angry. Mina's mother also tells Mina that she and Collins plan to marry her off to Mr..

Chels

Bottoms, Collins's vicious protege.

Chels

Mina goes to check on Mr. Monroe, who has been tied to his bed because of his thrashing. Monroe is barely conscious, but he starts speaking cryptically, giving away information about Collins that he shouldn't be aware of. He's also not speaking in an American accent, but an English one. Mina comes to the same realization that Collins must have earlier when he was angry. Mr. Monroe is lying about his identity. If Collins knows this, Monroe is in grave danger. Mina realizes that Mr. Monroe's illness reminds her of someone who ingested Belladonna, and she scrambles to find something to counteract the poison. She pries Monroe with the remedies, and then, hearing Collins arrive, helps him escape out the window. Before he goes, Mina asks him when Collins will be dealt with. Mr. Monroe, Phin, tells her today by sunset. Before he escapes, Phin thinks incredulously about how capable Mina is and decides that she must be part of the game, too. Collins did get arrested in Hong Kong, but tragically, not the day Mina helped Phin escape. It took two harrowing days for help to arrive, and Collins, enraged at Mina for assisting Phin, tortured her mother in retribution.

Chels

Fast forward to four years later, Mina is a successful businesswoman with a hair care company in New York, and she's visiting England with her mother, only to end up trapped in a London hotel suite, held hostage by a government official named Ridland. Shortly after they came to England, Collins escaped from incarceration and absconded with Mina's mother. Collins, a war profiteer and a wanted man, is at large now, and Ridland is holding Mina hostage for information on the pair of them. But Mina is clueless to her mother's whereabouts, chafes it being trapped, and is wary of Ridland's motives. Mina knows that Collins has help from inside the government, but she doesn't know who the traitor is and doesn't know if Ridland can be trusted. As Ridland interrogates Mina, not so subtly threatening to tear out her Phingernails, if she doesn't comply, he accuses her of having him on with her innate statements. Mina is, of course, no featherbrain, but an incredibly sharp woman with a well-oiled persona. Mina, something that previously kept her safe from Colin's wrath. Mina asks Ridland to assign her to another government spy, Phineas Monroe, hoping that the man she saved four years ago will feel honor-bound to help her.

Chels

Riddland declines, so a desperate Mina escapes from her window instead. Meanwhile, Phin has recently inherited an earldom and retired from spy work. He's having a difficult time assimilating into his new role. He's having panic attacks and is troubled by his violent thoughts. He harbors an acute hostility to his former boss, Ridland, and plots to subtly discredit him now that Phin is a powerful aristocrat with sway over important people. Before he was a spy, Phin was a map Baker under the tutelage of a man named Mr. Sheldrake. Sheldrake recently died, and Phin visits his family to pay his respects. He's greeted by Sheldrake's daughter, Laura, who Phin used to dream of marrying. Those dreams seem unreachable now. All he can think about is how unsuitable they are, how much he has changed, and how violent he has become. Shocked by the turn of his thoughts, Phin leaves the Sheldrake house abruptly. When he returns home, home. He finds a note from Ridland concerning a different woman he's tried to block out of his mind, Mina Masters. Later, Mina attempts to meet with her servant in an abandoned building, only to be tackled and disarmed by Phin, who says he is in charge of her now.

Chels

Phin notices that Mina still has her fingernails and seems no worse for wear from her time at Ridland's, so he concludes that she must be working with him. He doesn't know what Mina wants from him, but he's wary of her return into his life, and he intends to find out. Mina is caught off guard by Phin's behavior.

Chels

Instead of showing gratitude, he's truculent and accusatory.

Chels

They have a standoff in Phin's carriage, and Phin reveals his name, not Mr. Monroe, but Phineas Granville, the Earl of Ashmore. Mina puts on her flighty act, and she discombobulates Phin before asking him to help her find her mother. Phin refuses, saying that he is only going to protect Mina. Annoyed by his unwillingness to help her, Mina tells Phin there's no point in her staying with him. Phin then threatens to return her to Ridland, and a panicked Mina begs Phin to let her stay with him instead. He agrees, saying that she would need to play by his rules. House, and then he locks her in a room in his house. That night, Mina picks the lock in a room and goes to Phin's study to try to find out more clues about this person she's dealing with. Phin catches her snooping, and in his mind, this confirms his suspicion that Mina is in the game spying for Ridland. They have a very charged moment in the study, taking turns, arguing, threatening each other, and kissing. Phin locks Mina back in a room and puts her under guard. The next day, Ms. Laura Sheldrake and her mother come to visit Phin to thank him for his generosity.

Chels

After Mr. Sheldrake's death, his wife and daughter were in danger of losing their cottage, but Phin purchased it and returned it to them as a gift. The The servants accidentally deliver Ms. Sheldrake's trunk to Mina's room, and Mina decides to cause mischief and give Phin grief. She escapes from her room dressed in a scandalous Liberty gown with her hair unbound, and an annoyed Phin introduces her to the Sheldrake's as his cousin. The Sheldrake's are clearly uncomfortable with Mina, getting in digs at her American-ness, and Mina ruthlessly antagonizes them until they live in a fit of peak. Once they are alone again, Phin and Mina continue on in their game of antagonistic flirting, seamlessly moving in between threats and overtures. Mina says she doesn't fear Phin, and he responds with, If you could hear my thoughts, you wouldn't feel so certain. What? Mina asks Do you want to strike me? To ravish me? You may speak them aloud. I won't faint. When Phin threatens to tie Mina to a chair in her room, she reveals that she thinks Ridland might be working for Collins. She believes this because there was at least one another government agent in Hong Kong who was conspiring with her stepfather, and Ridland was there.

Chels

Phin rebuffs this idea and then tells her that Ridland already knows there's a spy for Collins on the inside. Mina is confused by this. She didn't reveal this information to Ridland while she was being held hostage. Phin remembers his previous conversation with Ridland, where Ridland tells him that Mina is worried about a traitor. Phin realizes belatedly the only reason Ridland would feel this information so sloppily was to try to draw the traitor to Mina and use her as bait. Mina then reveals that when Phin was poisoned in Hong Kong, it wasn't by Collins, but by the traitor who is also at large. So now that Phin is taking her at her word, he has this shocking realization about Mina. She was innocent of deliberate involvement, which meant that he had mistreated her terribly. In fact, as he reconsidered all their interludes with this new view of her in mind, he realized that it meant far more than that. It meant that she was sharp, and frighteningly clever, and foolishly brave, and rash to a bone-chilling degree. Phin asks her why she saved him in Hong Kong, and she answers it was because she knew he was after Collins.

Chels

It didn't really have anything to do with him. Phin, who is finally letting himself be enamored of Mina, wishes that it was for personal reasons. They kiss, but before it can turn into something more, Mina stops it and tells them she knows where to find Collins. After Mina's mother left with Collins, she sent Mina a very normal-sounding letter, with the exception of the phrase, I leave my welfare to Providence, something that Mina notices is very out of character for her mother, who used to joke that, Providence never put money in anyone's pocket. Mina concludes that Providence is the hint, and she finds that there's a small coastal village named Providence, and she believes that is where her mother is hiding with Collins. Phin agrees to look for her with Mina, and they board a train the next day. They are unable to get a train car alone, and Mina entertains herself by trying to make conversation with the other people in the train car, an older woman and her teenage son, and a single man. Annoyed by this, Phin pulls her out of the compartment and warns her not to draw attention to themselves, as Ridland could be watching for them.

Chels

Once they return back to the train car, they notice that the single man is hovering close to the door, presumably because he was trying to listen to their conversation. To confirm that he's spying on them, they have Phin pretend to get up at the next stop, and the man first begins to follow. But then when he realizes that Mina is still seated, he doubles back to stay with her. Mina and Phin use a newspaper to plan their next steps by pointing to words instead of speaking them out loud. Depart without announcement. Mina gets off at the next stop, and when the man rushes to follow her, Phin pretends to fall on him first and then discreetly chokes him until he passes out. As he jumps off the train to join Mina, Phin is overjoyed, and he thinks, The sunny scene looked impossibly vivid, as though painted in primary colors by an artist who hadn't yet learned how to shade. It should trouble him. It really should, that he felt so goddamned alive. Was he never going to learn settler pleasures? Because they've gotten off at an unexpected stop and another train doesn't arrive until morning, Mina and Phin have to stay the night at the inn.

Chels

There's a wedding ceremony happening nearby, and Mina and Phin join the festivities, dancing and enjoying each other's company. They go back to their room and finally have sex for the first time. It's very hot and overwhelming for Mina, but she doesn't come during the penetrative portion and isn't too certain about why this upsets her. Phin knows what's wrong, and he tells her that they aren't finished yet. He shows her how to get herself off with her own hand before going down on her himself, causing her to have her first climax. When they arrive in Providence the next day, they are told Mr. Collins and Mina's mother have been killed in a fire at the house that they were staying at on the cliffs. One of the villages has found a diamond that belonged to Mina's mother, seemingly confirming that she was there. Mina insists on seeing the house before she leaves with Phin, and when she arrives, she's startled to find Bonham, the American man Mr. Collins wanted her to marry in Hong Kong. Bonham reveals that he is the traitor, and Mina's mother is not dead. He promises to disclose her whereabouts if Mina reveals where the cipher is hidden.

Chels

Mina isn't sure what Bonham is talking about. She doesn't have knowledge of a cipher. Before she can ascertain what he means, Phin arrives arrives and shoots at Bonham, chasing him off. Mina then begs Phin to help her find Bonham, and Phin says they should return to home turf where they have the advantage. He then takes her back to his house. Things get very tense between Mina and Phin. Phin wants to protect Mina and even go so far as to keep her in a windowless room so Bonham can't get to her. But Mina wants to use herself as bait to force a confrontation with the man. They argue about it constantly, and it puts a great strain on their relationship. One night, a few men forcefully enter the house and try to abduct Mina. Phin discovers this and violently kills the men in front of Mina, telling her that she should be afraid of how easily he'd kill for her. Mina realizes that the men were searching for something in her room, and it was likely the locket that she accidentally knocked under her bed. The locket belonged to her mother and was being used as Collins's cipher.

Chels

It contained evidence that Bonham is the traitor that the English government is looking for, and Bonham wants it back. Phin finally agrees to let Mina use herself as bait to capture Bonham. She meets with Bonham in a park, and they draw guns on each other while seated on a bench. Then, Phin arrives, and before Bonham can fully threaten Mina, Phin shoots him in the head unceremoniously. Now that they're safe and there's no more traitor, Ridland reveals that he had been hiding Mina's mother. He He found her with Collins early on, killed Collins almost immediately, but kept Mina from finding out her mother was safe so that he could continue to use her as a pawn to trap Bonham. Mina's mother, who continues to have dubious taste in men, is even slightly enamored with Ridland, and Mina and Phin swear that they will intervene. Phin announances that Mina is his fiancé, and Mina does agree to marry him on one condition. She's tired of being locked up, so now she gets to hold with all the keys.

Chels

We've talked about beautiful characters in historical romance before. Specifically, I'm remembering Kate and a woman entangled who uses her beauty as a means to social climb. But I think Mina views it almost entirely as a burden. So here's a quote.

Chels

She could not think of what pleasure it had ever afforded her. It drew attention from men whom she would rather have ignore her and put her at a disadvantage with anyone who complimented her, since in return, they expected a show of humility or a simpering display of gratitude, both of which were hard to perform without feeling slightly diminished.

Beth

Yeah, I agree with that. And I think it's interesting with how Mina uses her beauty because she has a lot of tools at her disposal. So she sometimes uses it to her advantage, normally when she's trying to play shallow or dumb. But like you read in the quote, it can be used against her. She gets interest from men when she doesn't want it or when it's not useful to her at that moment. It's not like she can withhold her beauty and then just whip it out as she needs to obtain information from someone or smooth over a business deal. I like that you mentioned Kate. Mina is different from Kate to where I don't think Kate ever uses her beauty to shield her intellect, but they have different goals. Kate wants to reenter the aristocracy and heavily relies on perfected manners and beauty to potentially win over some earl or other titled man. Mina doesn't really want marriage. In fact, she finds independence in ruination. One other random observation is Mina's beauty potentially affects her relationship with other women. At least I'd not first get to know you. I just remember this little quick scene when she gets to this inn, they're going to find her mom, and they get there, and these men sitting around a table and drinking stop.

Beth

They're talking, and they gawk at Mina. There's a young woman among them, and she stands up, she's the innkeeper, and she goes to help Mina. It's this contrast where this girl has been sitting and drinking confidently with the men. Mina has this thought, It seemed Mama had something to learn about modern English girls. Then this girl surveys Mina and can't quite meet her eyes. After talking for a bit, this girl is nervously fixing her hair. Then Mina thinks, Your hair looks lovely. Mina wanted to tell her, We're not in competition, but experience suggested such reassurances, more often embarrassed the recipients than comforted them. I don't know. It's just a little extra touch that Duran throws in there that I liked.

Emma

Yeah, I thought the way the Duran talks about Mina's Beauty is great because so often I think beautiful is the end of the way that the beauty is discussed. But I think she describes it so specifically that I was able to envision what type of beauty she had. I pictured someone who would play an elf in Lord of the Rings. So I pictured Hunter Schafer or Liv Tyler, because the way that Mina's Beauty is described is off-putting, almost. It's like if you put her next to a person, it would become uncanny. How do these How are these people the same category of creation? And so it's this uncanniness, and it's off-putting and disarming. And it felt so specific. It's beyond just like, she's so beautiful that men are attracted to her. It's like, men have this desire to possess her. And even Phin, he uses the adjective "acquisitive." He's like, he wants to acquisition her. So I think sometimes historical romance prioritizes beauty as a safety net for women in a way that's just not true. It's like, if only I was beautiful, I wouldn't be in this situation. Or if more people thought I was beautiful, I wouldn't be in this situation.

Emma

And I think it sometimes elides other realities because we see how... It doesn't matter how beautiful Mina is if she can't maneuver out from underneath the thumb of Collins and his cronies. And even if she was actually less beautiful, maybe she would be getting less attention from the men who pay attention to her because she's pretty and are trying to show their allegiance to her stepfather. Even beautiful characters that we like and we're rooting for, sometimes the decision is between a practical relationship that we know is an option and a romantic option that requires emotional risk. And that's what I'm thinking about with Kate in A Woman Untangled, is that she's beautiful, and so she has this option to marry an earl, or she could marry for true love. Mina doesn't really ever have the first thing. She never has the practical relationship that she could just go about her life because of her beauty, because she's never provided an option for a safe, practical relationship. And I think also what I was thinking about with Mina's beauty in the context of how she describes Phin, because I think Mina sees her own beauty and her own power in her looks very differently than other people do.

Emma

So the way that Mina frequently describes Phin reminded me most of Unmasked by the Marquess, where Alastair is trying to parse Robin's Beauty and a binary definition fails him. This makes sense in that book because Robin is non-binary. So Alastair frequently uses male-coded and female-coded words to describe Robin's, like his attraction to Robin. And I'm not sure what Duran is doing, but if she's doing something... I don't think it's saying anything about Phin's gender identity, but she frequently has Mina call Phin words that are feminine coded. She calls him beautiful. She compares his bearing to a woman, like when he sits down or he walks. It's like he's walking like a woman or he's sitting femininely. She also calls him a pocket Venus. And then when she's in proximity to Phin, Mina seems to think about herself in more masculine or physical terms. There's a scene where she's underneath him when they're sleeping together, and she thinks about her ability to hold him up in that position actually makes her feel larger and more capable. And that was so different than normal descriptions of large man, tiny lady dynamics, where the large man makes her feel small and protected and teensy.

Emma

It's the inverse for this couple. And I'm not sure what to do with that other than it was exciting to read because it was so different.

Chels

Oh, I loved the part where Amina calls him a pocket Venus writ large because it's a callback.

Chels

She's remembering the times that other suitors have called her that, and it's an annoying and cloying compliment. And then when she says it to Phin, who's very tall, and it's just such an absurd thing. He immediately knows what she's doing. She's like, Oh, this is how Mina gets complimented. She's just throwing it back at me. It was so funny and so cute. I also love the way that Phin describes Mina, and this is before they're romantically entangled. He's like, Your eyes don't have a safe place to land on. There's no part of her face or her body where you can be comfortable looking at it. She's just It's so beautiful that everything has a visual interest, and it's just tiring.

Beth

It's like sensory overload for him.

Chels

Yeah. I was like, I understand that. That's such a funny way to describe it. It also makes clear that Mina's beauty isn't an easy beauty. It's not something that is just a net boon for her. More often than not, it's something that's a little bit of a burden or a little a bit of annoyance. And her reasons for that were very believable. I know that sometimes like, Oh, no, you're so beautiful. How awful. But for Mina, she's like, Actually, it would be better if these really bad guys paid less attention to me. I'm also not trying to marry up. I'm not trying to do the things that people say you need to be beautiful to do. So it's mostly just annoying. I like that you brought up the tiny lady, really big man dynamic thing, because that was something I was thinking about, too, when reading this book. I have heard from women who are very short, that the way that people interact with you can be extremely infantilizing. So if you're in a relationship with someone who's tall and an outsider is viewing you as a child, there's this weird prurient judgment on something that they can't know anything about your relationship.

Chels

They don't know about your dynamics. It's just like you're just people in bodies, and it becomes this weird statement. I often think people confused that with a fair critique of romance fiction, where the small, tiny lady and the really big man being the standard becomes more of a rigid adherence to gender norms. But it's really tough to critique because you can't really critique a single book for doing this, because, again, these couples exist in real life, and it's weird to make discourse around people's bodies, but it's the scale of it is the problem. It's not really the individual works, right? You know, Like Lord of Scoundrels is like one of the best books to ever do it, is one of a very tiny lady, very big man romance. That's like a consistently mentioned throughout the book. So it's just like an interesting thing to think of, how to talk about a book this way. And I like that Mina's size, because it's like something early on she says, too. She says she would trade 10 years of her life for a few inches. It's also not something she prizes.

Emma

Phin is also like... I feel like sometimes tiny lady, big guy. It's like the guy is describing the woman in very diminutive terms, doing that fetishistic infantilizing. And it's like, he's disarmed. He's like, Why is she so small? This is so annoying. He's annoyed by her height. And so it's not... He's not languishing over her bittiness, or it's not immediately the thing he's attracted to, or it doesn't make him feel more of a man to be with someone small. And so I like that it's like, these are just two characters who happen to be these heights, and it doesn't feel like this playing into the dynamic. Because I think what annoys me even more is when a woman is a normal size, not normal, but like- She's tall, but the guy she's with is even taller.

Beth

She's taller. It's even taller.

Emma

It's like, oh, It's like we can't envision... We really can't actually envision anything other than tiny lady, big man. So it's like, even when a woman is average height or is plus sized, her hero has to be, has to make her feel tiny lady. And it's like this book actually does It's the opposite. It's like we take tiny lady and he makes her feel larger than life, and he makes her feel powerful and strong. And I think I also like that she... In some of their sex scenes, this is the thing that almost never comes up in this dynamic. She's acutely afraid of her size? She's like, I can't fight back. If he does something that I don't want him to do, he picks her up at one point, and she's like, I hate being picked up. And she's like, I have to... But she realizes that he's picking her up in order to make love to her. And she corrects in the moment of saying, Oh, I didn't love that, but I know the end result with him is something I can trust. But I feel like that dynamic always never gets parsed out in this dynamic, where it's like, Oh, yeah.

Emma

A smaller person maybe has more to fear when someone is looming over them.

Beth

Yeah, I feel like... We'll talk about this more later on, but I feel like it adds to the fear, the size difference between them, because Phin does have a lot of violent thoughts and tendencies. I think it just adds to that dynamic that there is that size disparity, and he could hurt her. She would have a hard time defending herself.

Chels

Yeah. She always has that. Well, at least initially, she has that in the back of her mind. Every time that she interacts with him and pretty much everybody else.

Chels

Mina has a routine where she pretends to be very ditzy. It's both a self-protective measure to keep her abusive stepfather at arm's length. And then she also uses it as part of her business strategy later on. So here's a quote from the book.

Chels

When she had played dumb for Collins, it had made her teeth ache with anger. But in New York, she had batted her lashes and twirled her hair for a dozen social climbing investors, all of them willing to waste a bit of money on a society beauty's hairbrained scheme because they hoped a connection to her would serve them.

Chels

Each time, she had walked away feeling perfectly at peace with herself. So yeah, I definitely want to talk about this because it's one of my favorite things about Mina, just how much fun she has with this, just how much fun she has with this charade and how fun it is to watch her do it.

Emma

Yeah, I think the fun that she has is the important part because I think Phin, he reads her as like... He's like, The only reason you would lie or mask about your identity is like, subterfuge or espionage. And when he becomes an Earl, he's like, finally, I get to release this part of myself that I hated. I hated lying. I hated this break in my identity. And then I think when he sees Mina's duplicity, he very early on, he misreads her as possibly working for or being aligned with someone else, and this unnerves him. He's like, I don't know what her motivations are because there seems to be more going on here than just her ditziness, but also maybe she is this ditzy. But masking and code switching and lying a little bit to get what you want, or just her baseline operations. This is how she made her business. This is how she saved with her stepfather. But it's also something that's not unique to Mina. And I think Phin has to realize the line between espionage and life, especially life when you're easily subjugated, is much narrower. He can't firewall his behaviors from his spy days with his current life.

Emma

And that someone like Mina can also understand the weight of his actions have had on him, and that he's not the only one who experiences fractures. Just because he's the only one who is a spy in Hong Kong, doesn't mean that he's the only one who has multiple identities or multiple facets of himself. And I think this comes out where Mina gets really hung up on precise language. And I think that's his moment of access her facets and her subtleties and her mask fracturing. But she balks when Phin says he will let her do something. And so it's fun to see him think that he's dancing around her, like confusing her into complacency. And then she's turning his words back on him and asking for this precision. And that's one of those moments where he realizes she's paying so close attention to what I'm saying. There has to be more going on here. But also, if there's more going on with her, maybe there's more going on with everyone. And I'm not this broken individual who's fractured myself by becoming a spy.

Beth

Yeah, I really like that. I feel like Mina definitely reads as someone who... She doesn't have the same weight in the world as Phin, so she has to She's like, I need precise language from you because I need to know exactly what you mean or how you're going to come across to me. So yeah, I don't know. I just really like that point, Emma.

Emma

There's one point where he uses a metaphor, and it's the I was doting. I don't remember what he says exactly, but it's this beautiful confession of love. And she's like, Well, what did he mean? What do you mean? Did he mean what I said? It was a metaphor, technically. Maybe that's not what he meant.

Chels

I basically just love the dialog in this book, just whole cloth. I think it's so incredible. And it's largely because Mina is able to respond so rapidly that it's wild that Phin or anyone else would ever believe that she's a featherbrain. How could you do that? Just as a third-party I'm like, Obviously, she's very smart, but whatever.

Emma

She's blonde, Chels. She's long blonde hair.

Chels

And she's small.

Chels

I don't know. Actually, is that a stereotype for small... Maybe I just made that up. Well, maybe the childlike thing. I think Phin would agree with you. Yeah.

Emma

I think Phin's just... He's underestimating her at every identity marker.

Chels

Exactly. But I love the watershed moment where Phin realizes that literally everything that he believes about Mina is wrong just because he was foolish enough to take her at face value despite all the clues that she was dropping. So this is a quote from Mina. If you think on it, you'll realize I'm right.

Chels

I've surprised you a great deal, I think, and not just in London, but in Hong Kong, too. And you cannot account for it, so you resent me. You tell yourself there must be some explanation other than the real one. You think I'm working for someone who's clever. You can't even consider that I might be clever, because that would mean, well, between the two of us, you're the one who's the idiot.

Beth

Perfection.

Chels

I just... God, that was so good. Just also the... I remember this specific moment where like, Phin is realizing he's like, Oh, my God. Oh, my God. And then he's like, Oh, my God, she's amazing. I think that was like that... I think he was already half in love with her before then, but he was definitely in love with her at that point.

Beth

Yeah, I really like that quote, too, and what Mina says I hope this makes sense. This is just a general feel I have from reading a bunch of historm. But sometimes I feel like authors feel compelled to give their main character a Sherlockian feel, where it's like that main character has no evidence to believe that this person is smart or that they're putting on a front, but some feeling tells them that they are. There's some connection. And I don't... Not every instance of this is bad or whatever. It's fine. But sometimes it feels like the author is not doing the work to actually show a connection. It's just like there is a connection. They feel they can already see through the facade. And by the evidence... Here's a positive example So Connor, in Forever and Ever, he's pretending to be a miner as he's... What is he doing? He's a journalist. He is a journalist.

Chels

Investigative journalist who's going undercover in a mine. He's not pretending to be a child.

Beth

Yes, he's not pretending to be a child.

Chels

The job is the miner. The coal miner.

Beth

Oh, coal miner.

Chels

Well, it's not coal, isn't it? Copper?

Beth

Copper, yeah. Copper miner. So he's pretending to be a copper miner so that he can investigate the working conditions. And he keeps talking to the mine owner, Sophie, and he keeps referencing things like Shakespeare. And it's not like Sophie thinks that he's dumb, but she's just like, how would you know that if you were a copper miner? So she's like, that's the evidence she can use. And be like, this is suspicious behavior. So that's what I mean by evidence. But Phin has no evidence to contradict this image of Mina because she's playing the part so well. And then what Chels is saying, even with this quote that he doesn't even conceive of that she might actually be smart. And I think her beauty, again, reinforces this, that people just assume that she isn't.

Chels

I keep thinking about that quote of Phin early on where he's like, His had the bad taste to be drawn to hers. I love that quote. He's like, I don't know, but this isn't right. I don't like this. But it's not necessarily that he's recognizing that she's right for him in that moment, but it's just like- She's just like, Why am I lusting after this woman? It was very funny.

Emma

Yes. I was just thinking it was like, I feel like Mina is so... She's walking this fine line of keeping up with the act with Phin, but also she's giving him... I think she is giving him a lot of, not hints, but outs, where it's like, if he trusted her, because that's the thing. It's not just evidence. It's like, if he trusted her and looked at the whole picture and thought there was a possibility that she was smart. That would be the Occam's Razor or easiest answer. But it's like, if he's written that off. And also she doesn't necessarily trust him at this point. And she knows that in her interactions with men, it will be easier if he thinks she's dumb. It's like when she unlocks her bedroom and he's like, How did you get out? And she's like, I picked the lock. And he's like, What? How did you know to do that? And it's like she's telling him how she did it, but he's still like, She's stupid. How did she think to do this? And it's like until he has this overwhelming pile of evidence where it's like the only answer is that she's intelligent.

Emma

He's not willing to take the leap of faith, which is a theme in their relationship is that he's afraid of this knowledge or this trust of just believing that she's right about something.

Chels

So the events of Bound by your Touch, which is a Viscount Sandborne's novel. He's the friend in this book.

Chels

And Written on your Skin happened concurrently with both Sandborne and Phin have substance abuse problems.

Chels

So Sandborne is more of a classic dissipated rake with alcoholism, but Phin abuses opium. So laudanum, which is a mixture of opium and alcohol that was used for a medicinal purposes, shows up a lot more frequently in historical romance than opium itself. So yeah, I thought we could talk about how we see it used in other works and what Duran might be doing differently here with Phin.

Beth

The only thought I have is I just think there should be a lot more opium in history. This book starts in 1880, so we're like 20-ish years after the second opium war between England and China, where China had to cede control of Hong Kong, and then England increased opium sales there. It's widely used for pain Morphine is derived from opium. Oxycodone is synthesized from a component of opium. It's like the drug. I think the higher prevalence of laudanum comes down to its use as pain medication. I think just instances for an author to insert a drug into a novel would be like that, like a character's in pain so much that they need laudanum. I can't think of many characters who use opium, but I did come up with Kat from The Windflower, who gets high on opium after, right before he has a sex talk with Mary.

Chels

It's a perfect time. Honestly, yeah.

Emma

The one that I thought of was I think that Leo Hathaway in the Hathaways... I think originally he had to prescribe laudanum because he gets scarlet fever or something. Something contagious illness, which is what his first fiance dies from. So he starts on laudanum and then the death of his fiance continues his use of laudanum. And then he's using opium to numb himself. And then eventually he goes to a clinic in France to deal with his addiction. And I think in his book or a later book, he's tempted again with opium. And so we do see it as a recurring addictive relationship that he has with opium. And I think I've heard incidental use or maybe side characters are using opium. A character will smell opium in a den of sorts, even if the main characters aren't using it. The thing that I liked the most about this book is that it remains unresolved at the end of the book. It feels more appropriate for the setting in late Victorian era that someone may have continual use of opium. And also an appropriate vision of addiction, actually. There's a sense that this is going to be a thing that Phin might turn to at another point in his life.

Emma

It's not like he's sworn to Mina that he will never use opium again, or it's more like he's just acknowledging that this is something that he does and has a problem with. The big revelation is not that he's never going to use it again, but he started to disclose it to other people. So he tells Mina about it. Sandborne. He stops hiding it from Sandborne. Sandborne can smell it on him at one point. And I think this is a very modern way of dealing with talking about addiction. It's very harm reduction focused. It's like the thing that would put him in danger is if no one knew that he was using opium and he was using it in the privacy of his own home without anyone knowing to check on him or knowing that he had access to this. So it's the beginning steps of what's Phin's life going to look like, where he's going to try to avoid it. But also, I could see him, if he was in another stressful situation, turning it to it again. It's not like... So many addiction narratives end with like, Oh, that was something I was doing in the past, and love saved me.

Emma

And I'm not going to drink alcohol again. I'm not using laudanum again. And this book doesn't tie it up as neatly. And I think that's actually more novel and original.

Chels

Yeah. There's a pretty big opium addiction plot in The Prince of Eden by Marilyn Harris, which is also a Victorian historical.

Chels

So that's actually what I usually think of because it comes up again and again. So in the Prince of the Eden, Edward Eden's first use turns into sustained use, and then there's a drying out period and a relapse. I think it's definitely possible that Phin continues to struggle with this, even in his HEA. So I love that you mentioned that, Emma. It also got me thinking about, when we talk about the dissipated rake, the alcoholism needs to be cured by the end of the story. And I say cured with scare quotes. Like, it needs to be neatly wrapped up or feels resolved. And I think having a substance abuse problem does not preclude you from love. And I like that it's not wrapped up as neatly and that you can be a character who maybe doesn't have this wholly figured out. Or honestly, I think it's possible that you wouldn't have it figured out at all, and you could still be someone who gets an H-E-A. I was thinking about that, too, because like, landadum comes up a lot in There are a lot of caretaking scenes, lots of sickbed scenes in histrom. And I think it's a little bit easier or safer for historical romance writers to include it in their story because it becomes a addiction to a prescription scenario, where if you, as a reader, felt a certain type of way about people who abuse drugs, you wouldn't have that inclination towards someone who has prescribed something for pain relief without knowing the addictive properties of the medicine.

Chels

So I think it's like, if you view drug abuse as a major character flaw, then having a character who has a laudanum addiction is probably something that you can handle much easier. I'm definitely of the view that it's not a character flaw, it's like a disease. And so I like that it comes up, and I like that Duran handles it differently.

Emma

Yeah, I I wish when they... Even when they had laudanum, I wish there were more... I feel like sometimes laudanum comes up, incidentally, it just feels like, Oh, this is just medicinal practices of the time. Like laudanum will come up in the same breath as leaches or something. And it's like, Well, laudanum is still an opiate. You would still have a titration off of it. You would still have a hard... You might go through withdrawals off of it. It's still very addictive. Opiates are very addictive. And it's like, I wish that there was more depictions of that, because that is That's something that people struggled with. It's not just because they didn't have fentanyl, didn't mean that opiates were suddenly easier to withdraw from. So people died of lot of addictions, and people who were well-off died of laudanum addictions. And it was very pervasive. And I think it would be an organic way to talk about something that is both very relevant to lots of people's lives now and also was relevant in the 19th century. You wouldn't have to any shoehorning to have this metaphorical laudanum use. laudanum has... Or a laudanum or opium has its modern equivalence.

Emma

And it's like you could write a very compassionate love story because, yeah, like Chels said, You're not precluded from having a romantic love story happening just because you're addicted to something.

Beth

I just feel like there should be more recreational use. I know we're talking about as addiction, but it's like, there would just people be going to opium dumps, and I don't think they would have the same There's a diverse level of feeling back in the 1880s as there is now. But I think there would have just been people who were like, Yeah, this is how I relax after work. I don't know.

Emma

Yeah, the incidental use that I was thinking of definitely was like, signals, like we're in a bad place. Yes, yes. When that's not necessarily a historically accurate way of describing it.

Chels

Yeah, that's true. It's definitely not really a value-neutral thing. I think when you talk about dissipated rakes, sometimes people... I remember Mary Joe Putney, when she was writing the rake, she was like, I'm tired of reading about rakes who are just these hard living, hard drinking, but nothing really comes of it, nothing really happens of it. And I see that her perspective, and I also think that The Rake by Mary Joe Putney is pretty important if you're thinking about how historical romance handles alcohol abuse. But it's also like, They're literally are those people. There are those people who drink a lot, who recreationally use drugs, who... Especially when you're younger and you are in a... I don't know, what's it? Like a party environment. You're in a club environment with all your boys in their waistcoats and their- As you do. Yeah, as you do. I know. I've been invited to the waistcoat clubs many times. They're always giving me opium, and it's fine. Yeah. And yeah, I guess thinking of a little bit, too, about like, laudanum . And I just remembered when you were talking earlier, Emma, that Duran, actually, in the Duke of Shadows, the heroine is using laudanum And because she had...

Chels

I think she was prescribed it. Something very traumatic had happened to her at the very beginning of the book. And the hero is like, Hey, I know what you're doing because you're pupils. Just so you know, it's going to get weird if you continue Can you using it at this rate?

Beth

But it also is a pain medication. It would have been the pain medication. I don't know. Sometimes I think about... I got a lot of migraines, and I'm like, What if I was born in the 1850s? What would I do? And I probably would have used opium. I don't know. That's how you would have survived that stuff. I don't know.

Chels

Yeah. Well, I think it's really interesting because it's not like... Yeah, it's tricky because it's something that you can very easily develop a dependence on or an addiction to, but it's also historically, this is just what people would be doing, and it's what they had. And I don't know, it's like maybe in my household, We're like, Oh, if you're sick, you just have some ginger. It'll fix everything. I don't care. Sure.

Beth

But that's always the tension, I think, with historical romance. It's like, how much are you drawing on for the actual history versus how much are you commenting on your modern time, if that makes sense? That's very true.

Chels

It's like the leeches thing, right?

Beth

Yes. The leeches. Yes. Everyone's smart back then. If you're writing a histoire, no one uses leeches or bloodletting.

Chels

Everyone knows better. Everyone is like, Don't you dare let him into this room. And you're like, What scientific papers are you reading? Okay, so I guess next point. When we get Mina's point of view in some of these chapters, like Phin is very purposeful and controlled. But then when we get into Phin's head, it's shocking. He's having panic attacks. He's grappling with the violence he's been party to, and he's viewing himself as an innately violent person. He even has intrusive thoughts about hurting Ms. Sheldrake. He's incredibly angry that once he has left his spy work behind, he can't just really slip back into his old life. So I thought maybe we could talk about that.

Beth

Yeah, I did actually just want to read that quote because it is a little bit jarring the thoughts that he has about Ms. Sheldrake. So this is from Phins' point of view. "Oh, hell, he would not lie to himself. Laura Sheldrake smiled, and he wanted to smash her fingers. Mina Masters, pried into his desk, and he wanted to lift her skirts and lick the frown from her brow. He was bloody perverse, a hypocrite beyond measure." I like this fiction because I think it shows how violence has spill over into your life. If you indulge in violence, even when it's your job, it seems way more accurate to me that since it's an option, it... He has these intrusive thoughts, so it intrudes on your life, even when you're not being violent, you're just living your day today. Also, I don't know if this is a good thought, but there feels like a connection to me between this suppressed violence and Phin's lust for Mina. I feel like Phin is pushing for this mastery of himself, and he sees this as in contrast to not wanting to be his father. I don't know if he relegates less to a baser version of himself, because that's how he sees his dad.

Beth

This is from when he discovers Mina snooping in his office, and he's thinking about it the next day. "He had no taste for the sorts of arrangements or diseases that his father had contracted with horrors and mastering his new responsibility had left him little time to find some agreeable widow. With Mina Masters laid out like a feast on his desk, her eyes flashing defiance, he'd simply discover the cost of abstinence. But the explanation do not quell his disquiet. Her lips against his had conjured dark possibilities. All various fleshly punishments a beautiful woman could expect for poking her nose into other people's business. His imagination proved fecund and disturbingly depraved. She roused in him capacities that he'd try to forget he possessed best. She reminded him that for a decade he'd done very well as the villain."

Emma

This is the aspect of Phin that just made me love him so much because every time I was reading Mina's point of view, I've been thinking like, Oh, he's doing better. I would get tricked. And the answer is almost always, No, he's not doing better. He is white knuckling life. And I love that one of his revelations is that he assumes this attraction to Mina must mean that he wants to hurt her and take advantage of her because she's dumb and ditzy. And his And the assumption that she's ditzy, it makes him a lot less sympathetic. But then you realize when he's in his mind, how terrifying that is, this attraction to her. He's like, because she's not my equal in intelligence, I must be trying to take advantage of her. And he's also been tasked with caring for her and making sure she doesn't die. And also it's important that she doesn't die because otherwise he'll be revealed as the traitor. So he just assumes that he must be attracted to her out of malice because he's used to reading his own behaviors in bad faith. And then when she finally drops the mask at his prodding, he gets to be like, Oh, thank God.

Emma

I'm horny because my id could tell she was the smartest woman I've ever met. And it's just this relief. It's like, Oh, this one thing that I assumed was so bad about myself is not true. So maybe other parts of myself that are bad, I can also maybe assume are not true. And it's like, maybe this is a personal issue and not a personality trait. But it's just it's so sad to read those scenes where he's having a panic attack thinking about her. And it's like, I must be evil because... Yeah, you think it's like, he hasn't really experienced much life in this interim between being a spy and becoming Earl. He really hasn't had that much time to be normal. And he's so attached to, I'm going to not do this anymore. And he can't just shirk off that identity as quickly as he wants.

Chels

I love that quote. For a decade, he'd done very well as a villain.

Chels

It immediately made me think of A Lady's Code of Misconduct, where Chris Ben says, Let me be your villain at the end. That's one of the most iconic lines I can think of from Duran. I love that so much. So we just read Think of England by K. J. Charles, which is also a very violent spy book. So I had that in the back of my mind when revisiting Written on your Skin. So think of England has this moment where Archie very viscerally kills a man in order to save Daniel's life. And this is something that Phin does a few times in Written on your Skin. First, the intruders, he kills him with his bare hands, and then with Bonham. He even has this thought when he capacitates the man on the train. He remembers a time where he was less successful in doing so, and he actually ended up killing someone. So there's no way that Phin can have this job and escape or avoid the violence of it. And even if he tries, he's eight months out of spy work and is still struggling with the fact that he has that same mindset that he had before.

Chels

He didn't suddenly change with this different current occupation. Becoming an Earl didn't give him that placid life that he envisaged for himself. He can't return to that. I like it a lot when romance novels that are violent aren't obliquely violent. Since we've done It's a Newgate episode, then we know that prison in this area is a death sentence if you can't get out of it. So if Phinarrests spawn him at the end of the book, he's essentially doing the same thing as shooting him in the head. If it happens off page or not, it's irrelevant. It's the same thing.

Beth

What have you said about that you like when romance novels aren't obliquely violent? Because there's a line where he thinks, Oh, it's been eight months since I snapped a man's neck in 10 months since I shot him. It's such a specific detail, but you would remember that exactly. But it also conveys to us, Okay, this is violence. There's events that happen, even though we don't see them. So we're informing who he is.

Emma

Yeah. I like Another loose end at the end of the book is that Bonham is not actually dead. It's like he's pooling in his blood, and even though he's been shot in the head, they're like, Oh, he's not dead yet. And I like that we don't know what happens to him. It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter, but it's also like, Oh, there's this thing that we don't get this tidy solution. We don't get him in handcuffs saying his evil plan as he's walked away or something. It's a thing that happens in these lives. And I think it's true about violence being oblique. Is it any time that people have lots of power or money, there is violence going on? It's just who is enacting it? Is it a system enacting it? Is it personal violence? What is protecting this power that people have? And it's like, for so long, Phin was a protector of England's power. It's like this is the 19th century, and England is still an imperial... It's at its imperial peak. In order to have that, they have to have people who are doing imperial things, which are violent. And so often we just get...

Emma

If you're going to have a book set in England, someone is killing someone, right? In order to have the setting that we're in, that's happening. You could also argue that's true now if you set a novel at a contemporary America. But But that's not our bag.

Beth

Yeah, we're a historical romance podcast.

Chels

So I think technically, the villains of the story are Collins and Bonham, the man who's actively trying to capture or kill Mina at the end. But Ridland is also very terrifying. I like that Duran's version of spy work is stripped of patriotism or heroism. It's a career path that ruthless people are drawn to, and both sides are equally willing and capable of hurting Mina.

Emma

He's terrifying. So he makes this comment about, you'll think about this if you care about your fingernails. And I was like, it took me a minute to register. He means he's going to pull out her fingernails. And I was like, that's so scary. And I had to reread it the first time I read the book because I was like, that's such a... It's so explicit, the violence that he's enacting on her. And it's like, she's not protected because she's small. She's not protected because she's beautiful. She's not protected because she's a woman or American. It's like he's threatening her in this way that I think he... I think it could be like, oh, I'm threatening you and the threat is what I mean. But it's like, I also think if it turned out to be a turncoat, he would pull off her fingernails. And I think there's also this tension where Mina is trying to make sure that Phin isn't going to be like Collins, and Phin is trying to make sure he doesn't turn into Ridland. So both of them have this vision of a violent man, that they're trying to make sure that he's not, even though he has these violent intrusive thoughts.

Emma

Mina pretty quickly is like, he's not like Collins. She sees that in Hong Kong, which is why she trusts him in Hong Kong. And it takes Phin longer to realize that he can have these intrusive, violent thoughts because of his job and the standards of violence in his life and not be like these people. But relative to Mina, Collins and Ridland are the same because they're both threatening her. And so it doesn't matter. One's on the side of the British Crown and one is stealing money. Both of them are using and abusing her or threatening to for their own bigger means. And then Phin's bigger means is protecting Mina. So you would think that it would be an easier sell to her. So he feels more noble about it. But to her, the result is the same. He's still not trusting where he's not letting her be her own person, he's still locking her in rooms, just like Collins and Ridland did.

Beth

Yeah, Ridland is pretty terrifying. And I think you can see that when you measure Phin's reaction to him, lots of this novel is about imprisonment and who exerts what control. So when Phin was working for Ridland, it wasn't so much a choice. There's a part of the book where Phin gets a letter from Ridland after he's become an Earl. And now at this point, he has a choice, and he thinks about before how didn't, how these letters used to run his life. So this is a thought that Phin has. Initially, his own oath of service had bounded him to obey. Gradually, with his unfortunate peers as examples, he learned the more urgent unstated cause for compliance. Ridland had no scruples in disciplining defectors. It's not as easy as Phin just disappearing because Ridland would have gone after his friends. Then Phin even does the thought of, What if he'd killed him? But Ridland's work keeps people alive. So now that Phin has this title and power, essentially, he's slowly dismantling Ridland's power. And he doesn't want to go back to that life. There is that tension when he first hears from Ridland, if he wants to help Mina, I think.

Beth

Is there a choice there?

Chels

Or he just- Yeah, he does have a choice. He shows up and he tells Ridland, he's like, I'm not helping you. I'm taking Mina off your hands. And then Ridland is like, She's hard to deal with.

Beth

It's really hard for him. Yeah, he doesn't want to help Ridland. So this is a quote, and I already referenced it. But he was like, he would gladly consign himself to the fires of Hell before he helped Ridland. Eight months since he fired a gun, 10 since he snapped a neck. These were privileges to be guarded more carefully than diamonds.

Chels

Oh, Phin.

Emma

He's not doing well for so much of the book.

Chels

No. Oh, my God. He's just like, I'm feeling really violent. And then he does something violent and he's like, That was good. I enjoyed that. I shouldn't have enjoyed that. Yeah. So I talked about this earlier, but something that I really liked about written on your skin is you're not drawn into the, These are the good guys, these are the bad guys, whatever, because they both have similar methods and lax scruples. An arms dealer isn't the villain because he's an arms dealer, because who is he arming? People with grievances against English for violent occupation. So Like, Collins is a villain for interpersonal reasons, like the way that he treats Mina and her mother. It would be very easy to see Riland's stepping into that same role. Like, the English government doesn't give a shit about Mina's safety, as evidenced by the fingernails threat. But Mina is more inclined to align herself with their goals because she views Collins as a bigger threat to her family. And she also thinks she can leverage Phin's gratitude for saving her life into an action that will eventually save her mother. I almost said she inaccurately thinks that she can do that, but he does help her save her mother, so it ends up working out.

Emma

Yeah, I like that you mentioned that Collins being an arms dealer is not what makes him bad. Because at the beginning of the book, I did think, I was like, how evil is Collins. I think I wanted to read him maybe as a bumbling stepfather for the first little bit because I was like, oh, he's... I'm not rooting for England, in Hong Kong. I'm definitely rooting for the people who are trying to bring this colonial government. And I think Duran... Again, I haven't read Duke of Shadows, but I think we talk about threading the needle. I think it's very easy to read this book and be confused by that dynamic. And I think Duran wants you to be confused. How do you feel about these things? And Phin has that story he tells Mina about being sent into an area to retrieve someone, and he realizes the person he's retrieving is actually sowing Discord in the viceroy's area. And he's like, I was saving someone who was trying to incite war and make it easier for England to take over more of India. And it's like, it's not... He's like, That was bad. But he was also like, That's also my job, and I don't know what to do.

Emma

And I didn't know what to do then. And it's like, you can't... I think reading that, you can be like, Yeah, that sucked. You shouldn't have done that. But also, he did it, and all people did it in England. I think threading that needle is like... A lesser author would have made everything much more black and white.

Chels

Yeah. It would have been like, well, you get to feel okay about this because this is okay. But it's like, Duran's like, no, this is nasty. These are some nasty things that are happening that you should probably be thinking about and paying more attention to. Yeah, I think that's a hallmark for her, actually. She has an intentionality in the way that she writes. In the early pages of the book, Phin thinks about Mina and her mother, quote, But the feather brain was about to waken into a strange new world. Once Collins was in custody, her admirers would scatter like rats from a stripped corpse.

Chels

Her mother would probably try to leap out a window. Both women would learn very quickly what it felt like to have one's choices torn away. He saw no good outcome for them. The mother's family did not speak to her, and neither woman had a marketable skill. Their beauty would sell, of course, but it would not survive a few rough handlings.

Chels

So yeah, I like this quote a lot because it's obvious Phin is thoroughly tricked by Mina his disroutine at the beginning, but it's also bringing to light that casual cruelty that we're talking about earlier with these like, men with important missions, treating women as disposable. This is also Phin's great great transgression against Mina. Like, after she rescues him, he pushes her out of his mind, not letting himself wonder what happened to her before and after Collins was arrested. What are your thoughts on this?

Emma

Yeah, I love that the main conflict in the relationship is not solved by Phin apologizing to Mina because I feel like that's what I expected to happen, and that would be the normal beat in the book is this big revelation. He's like, Oh, I should have been thinking about you for the past four years. Let me lie prostrate and apologize to you. And we never really get that scene because I think they both realize that they actually both have misconceptions about that night. Because Phin thinks his escape is dependent on his actions, and Mina's help is based on her crush on him. She keeps telling him, It had nothing to do with you as Phin. It was because you were against my stepfather. Because a Phin could have been anybody in his circumstances, and Mina would have helped him. And so Phin doesn't have... It's not this personal thing as much as a thing that happened that they both are like, This is just what set us on our tracks. And it harmed Mina, but it's not a harm that he needs to repair, really, other than the fact that he owes her this favor, which he then acts on.

Emma

But the mutual anguish over this moment makes the much more hard fought. Pretty quickly, Phin is not helping Mina because he owes her anymore, but because they have to work together to figure out what the new dynamic is when they're actually in each other's presence. She's had four years of fantasizing about him owing her this favor. Like, what will he do when he repays her. And he's had four years of repressing any guilt he has about this moment. And then they both have to confront both those things together. So it's not just one-sided of Phin being like, Oh, I fucked up. And I should have helped you in that moment, or I that should have helped you sooner, or checked on you sooner.

Beth

Yeah, I agree with Emma that pushing past the need for Phin to, quote, apologize to Mina is not an interesting conflict because you have these smart characters and a level of spycraft involved. I think it's much more in line with their characterization to be operating on the latest information that they each have about each other or just in general. Duran keeps that night as more of a question in each other's mind. And it goes to one part of the motivation for me to trying to make good on... Or for Phin to make good on this promise, and then him finally reckoning with what happened that night. It also goes back to what we were talking about before, where, Emma, you mentioned it didn't matter. It wasn't about Phin. It was just the fact that he was against the stepfather. And so Phin isn't crediting her with the intelligence of moving pieces on a chess board.

Chels

I remember being so angry with Phin when I got to his point of view chapter where he talks about pushing Mina out of his mind after she saved his life. But I think upon reread, he's saying to himself, She's got to be part of the game. So he recognizes the action for the calculated decision that it is in the half dead inebriated moment he's having. But when he sobers up, he returns to thinking that Mina is a featherbrain. I think the real difficulty in it was in those two days, like what Collins did to Mina and her mom before he gets arrested. This isn't something that Phin could have changed. He was reviving himself at the time and escaping, but it's that lack of curiosity, which is the real crime in Mina's eyes. When people are taking her at face value, they aren't seeing how singular she is. They're writing her off as expendable. And since this is a romance, Phin needs to recognize that this is a transgression, not because he could have saved Mina, but because he could be valuing her more.

Emma

I love the part where he asked her about her injuries, finally. So she has scars from her escape attempt in that scene. And he's seen them because they've slept together, but he hasn't asked about them. And he acknowledges that he's seen them, and she's like, Oh, how like him to notice something and not ask. And it feels like an inverse of to have it to hold, where the whole time, Sebastian is poking and prodding Rachel. And it's like, I want the answer. I want the answer. I want the answer. And it's not until she's ready to give it to him that she can. This feels like the opposite of that, where it's like, Phin, it's a lack of curiosity is this self-preservation mode. And him giving something to Mina is being like, I will hear what happened to you that I was curious about, because even though it will hurt me so much to hear what happened to you exactly. And it works, it matches this emotional tenor the same way. But it's the opposite way of information sharing, is that he's curious about it and it isn't poking and prodding her. And that is also similarly hurting her, is like, he saw my scars and he's being polite about them rather than curious.

Emma

And he views that as noble, and she views it as just a reality of his disinterest.

Chels

I am very rarely interested in the American versus English conflict in historical romance, because not a political conflict, but the one... You know the one where it usually revolves around social differences that impact the marriage part?

Chels

Written on your Skin uses mean as American bringing in a way that I do actually like, to contrast her with her English mother who longed to return to this idyllic country life that is no longer a reality in the late Victorian era.

Chels

And for Mina to have something obnoxious to lean into whenever she wants to shock or annoy Phin. So what do you think about how the country clash works and written on your skin? And maybe you can talk about other books you like that have like a American and England fish-out-of-water dynamic.

Emma

So I love the scene in the dance hall where They're in the country dance hall, and it's one of their... It's where they kiss before they sleep together for the first time. Mina acknowledges that this return to the earth unsullied country life that is the makeup of so much English nostalgia is not actually something her mother probably ever experienced. This is something she's grown up hearing about her mother being like, if only we were in England, things would be so green and beautiful and easy. Her mom has this vision of England that's not even based in her mom's bourgeois reality. Her mom would not have experienced this country life. And that country life It's still like, it's false. This is one of my favorite tensions in historical romance, and having an American character witness it is a good way of doing it. I think another novel that we've already talked about a little bit that does it most directly is Forever and Ever from Wyckerley. Connor has a similar outsider position, and he points out this falsity, like nostalgia for country life. It's like this idea that's something that... It's like never really existed. People who are in the industrial era of the late 19th century might have a maid there and be like, oh, we're returning to the country life.

Emma

So people at the beginning of the century would have the Mayfair because their lives were really hard because they were farming all the time. Nostalgia is a narrative and a coping mechanism. And it's like you can never really return to something that didn't exist. And I think this is a theme throughout English narratives about itself. I think even you can go back to King Arthur. It's like King Arthur is set in a medieval period that never really existed. And I'm thinking about other American characters. I thought about the Bowman sisters from the Wallflowers. They loom large as like, hoyden-ish Americans. I think Sarah McLean has an American American hero who comes to England. But I think a more useful comparison for Mina might be Henry James's, Daisy Miller and Isabel Archer, who are two women who could have been Mina. Their positions as Americans and American women who have money are used against them, and they lead to tragic in sequences, either death in the case of Daisy Miller or a very conventional marriage for Isabel Archer in Portrait of a Lady. And Mina reminded me a lot of Daisy and Isabel, but Mina is like someone who has someone to trust her.

Emma

And in instead of manipulating her, and it's like you could see Mina's life going the way of Daisy Miller or Isabelle Archer. If she married like Bonham, or she married another one of Collins' cronies, or even just married another Englishman who saw her as ditzy. If she had done a more practical marriage, she would be manipulated into despair, which happens to Daisy Miller, or manipulated into a very conventional marriage.

Beth

Yeah, I actually really liked this dynamic of Mina being American. I think a lot of her frustration with interacting with English is what works for her in New York doesn't work in London. Obviously, each country treats and views class differently. In England, you're born with it or married to it. The social rules reinforce it? I'm up here and you're down there? I couldn't find the scene, but there's this scene where Mina recalls her mother talking about all these social rules. When you enter a great house, you don't deign to talk to the footman. You must speak with the butler who will then delegate your orders to the footman. She has a lot of thoughts like this, too, about how smug Phin was. This is from the book. She should have realized he was titled from the moment she first met him. He'd fit every description her mother had given her of an overbred Englishman. Alas for him, she was no milkwater London girl. It also irks her that he has this title and power and has no need of money, so she has to try to persuade him by other means. I like how Mina uses her Americanness, everything she has, just like any other tool.

Beth

So she will play it up sometimes. She's talking to a maid and she's playing up how many... She has lived lots of different places, but she wants to empty her own trunk. So she just says to me, let me have my quote foreign ways. And I just want to empty my trunk on my own. And then if she asks a direct question, trying to get information, again, she's like, well, you know how us Americans are. We're very direct. But I do like that Phin questions how Americans use social class. So he says, Sure, it might have a... He doesn't say this. This is me talking. Sure, it might. There's obvious social rules, I think, in England. But America still has class system. There's still rules. It just feels a little bit settler. So Phin says, Is America so different then? Can people behave without care for their stations. So I don't know. I thought it was fun. I thought it was an interesting conflict. I feel like Durant is holding so many different things. I don't know how she kept track of them all to have these characters interact in these ways.

Chels

I think something that's particularly fun about Mina is that when she's in England, she uses her Americanness to annoy people into doing what she wants. When she meets with the Sheldrake, she pretends that she doesn't know what Eton is just to annoy them and get them to leave in a half.

Beth

Honestly, amazing. I'm going to do that next. If I go to England, I'm just be like, What is Eton again?

Emma

She would love American versus England TikTok.

Beth

Yes.

Chels

Oh, God.

Emma

What do you mean beans on toast?

Chels

You guys know I'm on American versus England TikTok because it's just like, I think your SIM card knows that you're whatever, you're somewhere you didn't used to be. And I just like, every time someone says something mean about Americans or vice versa, I have to see it. And I'm like, why do I have to see this every time? But yeah, I was trying to think of another, other books that have alone American that aren't marriage-marred oriented. This is not English. This one's scottish The Scot Beds His Wife by Kerrigan Burn.

Emma

She's like the... She's a cool American.

Chels

She is cool.

Emma

She's one of my favorite Kerrigan Byrne characters. And I don't love Kerrigan Byrne, but that heroine, in the first page, she shoots someone in the head. She's so cool.

Chels

Her husband.

Emma

Yes. She shoots her husband. It opens with her shooting him in the forehead. I'm like, this is cool. She's awesome.

Chels

Yeah. It does seem very like...

Emma

She's like a cowgirl.

Chels

She's a cowgirl. She's like a Rootin Tootin, like the Yee-haw. It was fun. Speaking of cowboys, the other one I thought of was The Indiscretion by Judith Ivory. It's not her best book, but I always think of something really funny because he's a millionaire cowboy who has to journey through the moors with the daughter of a viscount. They get stranded. And they end up using his red Union suit to flag down a train. Do you know what a Union suit is? It's like those long underwear, like the old-timey. It's all one piece, and it has just the little buttons here. So it's just a funny image. I don't know.

Emma

The other thing I thought about with settings, which is that... Let's see with Mina being an American, and more as just the romance starting abroad, because this is something that happens with Phin, is that she initially thinks he's American, and this is how he gets found out, is that he's pretending to be from Chicago, which also... I've probably Chicago accents were different back then. But was he doing a Chicago accent? Like, da bears. That would have killed me. But he's supposed to be from Chicago. So she thinks there's this sympathy between them. She's like, oh, we're both Americans on Hong Kong. And then when she realizes that he's probably not actually from Chicago, and this is how he gets found out as a spy. But I think the thing that this... One of the books that this reminded me a lot of was Lord of Scoundrels, because that romance starts in France. And we get a lot more of the romance in France before they go back to England. But the difference there is that Dane is an aristocrat, and then Jessica is a hoyden who's disengaged from that. She's like, I don't really care about the system anymore.

Emma

So she still has an outsider aspect when she goes and has to be married to Dane. But I think that dynamic of we established our relationship in one country where we were both outsiders, and now we have to switch it in England, where all of a sudden the stakes are so much more codified and strict. And Phin falls into that very quickly. He's like, I am an Earl. He's still getting used to it, what the demands of an Earl are, but he's excited at the prospect of being able to divest from espionage. And now, Mina comes and doesn't understand the rules. And I think starting abroad and then moving to England. England as this system of codes and secret messages. I like when that dynamic happens. It also happens in Private Arrangements. When Cam's like, we couldn't have started in England because England is this oppressive feature on our relationship. We only had the chance in Copenhagen, and then we lost it. So I think it speaks... I think there's something there with the settings and also her being American, that she retains that outside that he loses when they return to England.

Chels

So when we were picking what Duran booked to read for the podcast, I said, Written on your Skin is Very Sexy.

Chels

I think Duran is so, so, so good at not just sex scenes, but really charged moments between the main couple. So I think we could talk about here, how she writes this, what makes it so special.

Emma

So this is the first Duran that I read that I really got the Sherry Thomas comparisons, because I think, because we just read Private Arrangements, but I also think because of the sex scenes, I think it helps a little later. So I feel like she can get away with a type of flirting that readers might balk at in Regency or the early Victorian period. Phin, even in Hong Kong, before he's revealed himself as an Earl or an aristocrat. And he has this very frank way of talking about sex that intrigues Mina, even though she feigns annoyance by it. He curses at her. And I think if a hero did that in the Regency, it would be like, what's happening? So I think we can buy it a little bit more later, but it also makes for more charged moments. And what I loved in this book is there were so many moments where characters didn't act like they were supposed to, but instead acted how both Mina, how Mina and Phin would believably act, or how people actually act when there isn't a reader voyeuristically passing judgment on them. And So I'm thinking about all the times during sex when either, because they both do this, say, don't do this thing or wait to do this thing.

Emma

And then the other one keeps doing it. Because this is the thing that I could see someone being like, oh, they're not getting each other's consent. Like, this is a This is a fraught moment for them. So Phin's example is that Phin asked Mina to wait in her seduction of him, and Mina later asked for him to ignore her hair during sex. And I think another author, especially one writing now, would have these negotiations be big signals of consent talk. One of them would say, wait or no, the other one might push, and the other one would balk and be like, okay, we're going to talk about our boundaries, which I think those scenes have a place in romance. But Mina and Phin's whole story is about trust and choosing situation together. And so novelly, I think this is one of the only books I've read where a hookup gets started but doesn't get finished. Nobody has an orgasm. And it's not being interrupted. They just stop hooking up. So they start hooking up, the moment passes, the stakes change, And then they stop. It's not like, oh, this is our kissing scene, and now here's our PG 13 scene.

Emma

And here's our penetrative sex scene. And I think in this dynamic, that the sex can just end if it isn't right, is important to both Phin and Mina's ability to negotiate and push past each other's comfort to explore uncharted areas. I'm able to see that actually they are both consenting to those scenes where one of them is pushing the other one because there have been moments where they started hooking up and then they just stopped because they trust each other to do that. This is such a contrast to any scene where I'm thinking of a hero says, If we don't stop now, I won't be able to stop. To me, that's a much scarier threat of a lack of boundaries than Phin continuing to paw and pull Mina's hair in bed.

Chels

Yeah.

Chels

So we're talking about the year this book was written or there was this thing, I think, with a dear author called Meredith Duran, one of the authors that is a return to the golden age of romance during the 2010s. They're comparing Duran to Laura Kinsale and Patricia Gaffney, and Judith Ivory. And it's interesting because I can see her pulling from those authors a lot, particularly in the sex and intimacy. So there was another interview I found where a Cat Latham interviewed Duran and then asked her about how she writes sensuality, and this is what she said, I've always admired writers who managed to immerse you in a multisensory experience of the moment. Judith Ivory, for instance, is extremely gifted at this. Just consider the scene in Untie My Heart when Stuart walks into the bank and the heroine is overwhelmed not only by his face, his manner, his voice, but also by the flow and cut of his coat, the way he seems to charge the air around him. What makes it seem sensuous are precisely these details. And when I'm writing, I imagine myself in the scene and try to communicate exactly what brings that scene alive to me.

Chels

It feels a bit like acting, in fact.

Beth

I really like what you both said, and I really like that quote. An author like Mary Robinette Kowal will sometimes give little writing tips on TikTok, and one has stuck with me. She says when she's constructing a scene, she'll list out the sensory detail she wants to weave into the scene. So she does four It's two sight details, three sound ones, two smell, and one taste. As a reader, this has shifted how I read because I'm noticing those details more and when they're employed. From that quote, it says something about the character and the connection for her to notice the flow and cut of his coat. So these sensory elements for Duran during the sex scenes just ramps it up a bit. I know sex scenes can serve multiple purposes, or maybe the plot is advanced, or the characters hit an emotional beat. But relishing in the sensory experience, I think, is a good use of the sex scene. And what stood out to me was references to taste, like they remember and savor the taste of each other, which I liked a lot.

Chels

It was so sexy. Spybooks should be very sexy. If you're not writing a sexy spybook, what are you doing?

Beth

Yeah, there's always going to be a low level of antagonism going with that relationship.

Emma

So I like how often Mina mentions that she smells his sweat. Yes. The heroes who smell like sandalwood.

Beth

They smell like an evergreen forest. Okay.

Emma

He's wearing Ax Body Spray? What? But it's like, he smells like Bayberry, but then sometimes the soap will wear off, and she's like, oh, he just smells like sweat now. But it's like she's turned on by it. I'm like, that's so... Because she also is obsessed with smell because that's part of her business is she's in England to get the lavender. And so she's always noticing smells. And so the scene when he comes in, saves the men, or saves her from the men, and she's like, she knows he's in the room because she can smell him.

Chels

Oh, that's right. She could smell him like a half second before she saw him and I'm like, Phin.

Chels

He's here. Take a bath, buddy.

Beth

It's going to be one of those moments where your brain is catching up with what sensory input you're getting. You're like, Wait, why do I smell this familiar smell?

Chels

All right. So do you have Any final thoughts on the book?

Emma

This book was very sexy. I don't know why I'm surprised when Chels recommends a sexy book after they've said, This book is very sexy. Still, I was like, Oh, yeah. Like, surprisingly sexy.

Beth

Yeah. I feel like it's one of those books where it's like, I cannot go to sleep until these two people kiss at least. That's like my chemistry test for if a book is really good.

Emma

Yeah. Whenever I check, I don't skip ahead, but I sometimes will do a search on my e-book. I'm like, just so I know, is it in this chapter or is it the next chapter? When do I have to read to get to a kissing scene? Some books don't inspire me to look, so this one definitely did.

Beth

Yeah, it was really good. Awesome.

Chels

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