Forbidden Affections is a novella by Jo Beverley that has been published in a couple of different anthologies, including A Spring Bouquet (Zebra, 1996). I read the Kindle version, reissued by Zebra (Feb 2011) in the anthology An Invitation to Sin.
I’ve been looking for a romance that would make a good companion to Eliza Parsons’ The Mysterious Warning for a panel I’m on this spring and @JanetNorCal, a big JoBev fan, suggested this one, since it has Gothic overtones. Beverley is a solid read for me, and this novella — once I rewrote bits of it in my head — is no exception.
Anna Featherstone, age 16, relocates from Derbyshire with her family to a London townhome for the season, so her 19 year old sister Maria can make her debut. Anna is thrilled to discover that her new bedroom is an exact replica of the bedroom prison of her favorite heroine, Dulcinea, from the “revolting novel” Forbidden Affections by Mrs, Jamison. The elaborate bed is carved with “grinning skeletons and contorted gargoyles”, the wallpaper design includes coffins, and there are skull shaped ivory knobs on the armoire. Even better, Anna discovers a secret passage by the fireplace that takes her next door, to the home of the Earl of Carne.
It turns out the bedroom once belonged to Mrs. Jamison — really the very married Lady Delabury — who was found dead in the Earl of Carne’s bed some eight years prior. While the Earl was not in residence at the time of the death, his heir Lord Manderville was. Manderville, who eventually became the Earl of Carne, went abroad, under a cloud of suspicion, never to be seen or heard from again.
Naturally, Carne does return, and he and Anna have a midnight encounter in his library as she snoops for reading material and more information about the suicide of her favorite author. Carne, drunk and tired from his travels, mistakes Anna for a servant, and they have the kind of interaction that was not very enjoyable to read. Whenever you have a hero saying things like “I’m no rapist…” you know you’re in trouble:
He eyed her over the rim of the glass, studying her dispassionately from tousled head to naked toes. “Very Pretty. How old are you.”
“But sixteen, milord.”
“There’s no use putting on that servant’s burr again, sweetheart. Sixteen’s a good age.” He drained the glass and placed it on a table by his elbow. “Come here.”
<snip>
He raised his brows. “I could threaten to dismiss you tomorrow. Yet why do I feel that wouldn’t sway you? So, I’ll make another threat. If you don’t come here and be kissed, my sweet mysterious Maggie, I’ll come to you and do much worse. And you have my word on that, too.”
After a moment, he added, “that trembling innocence, the hands over the mouth, the eyes wide with panic, will not sway me. It’s actually quite arousing, you know.
…
“You’re as tasty as a rosy apple, sweetheart. I think I’ll call you Pippin.”
At that use of her father’s pet name, it was as if he were here, witness to her shame.
Luckily, Anna escapes with her virtue intact, but she does have to brain him with his own brandy glass.
Eventually the Earl figures out she’s a gentlewoman, living next door, and he contrives to get an invitation to her home (she’s not “out”, so meet-ups are not easy to arrange.). She’s attracted to him, and he to her, although he tries to tamp it down in the interest of protecting her virtue. They develop a friendship over their mutual interest in working out the mystery of the secret passageway and Lady Delabury’s death, in which, of course, he played absolutely no part. Recognizing that Anna is too young for him, the Earl lets her go back to Derbyshire, having shared only a kiss. But in the end, he comes to her and proposes.
Anna, with her curly dark hair, round body, and ruddy looks, is contrasted sharply in the text with her willowy blond sister and mother. Anna is practical, steady, enterprising, and mature for her years, while they are vapors-prone and obsessed with fashion and society. Anna often refers critically to the heroines in her favorite novels, and her complaints are so similar to those that can be found even this week on any romance message board, that this novella almost serves as a meta text:
One of the things about the book that irritated Anna was that Dulcinea’s escape from his wicked plans was not of her own doing. Anna could think of any number of ways the silly creature could have escaped but of course Dulcinea had waited for the handsome Roland to find the secret door and rescue her.
Later, on the same subject:
[The book] is a little like Scherazade, my lord, except that Dulcinea does nothing to change her fate. She just faints and weeps.
Or how about the Earl’s mother’s critique of the novels Ann loves:
“She has often declared that they turn young ladies into weaklings, inclined to faint at the slightest thing. I will delight in telling her how wrong she is.”
I loved the plot of this book, and think it would have made an excellent novel, with an older heroine and a hero who was more fleshed out. But I could not get over the heroine’s youth. I wondered what would draw a man who had lived life to the fullest in London and then traveled for nearly a decade to such a young girl from the country. Thankfully, there were no sex scenes, but I did wonder, also, what would motivate an author in 1996 to write a 16 year old heroine and a 30 year old hero, given the obvious squick factor. Sixteen was not the usual age for betrothal, as Anna’s own family and her suitor make clear in the text.
I really enjoyed the interweaving of the “horrid novels” and the Gothic elements, but as a romance, this one didn’t work for me.
