Pleasurably intense midbook longing in Your Scandalous Ways

One of my favorite things ever in any historical is when the author has cranked up the longing between the H/H to a feverish and breathless level. And about halfway through the book, the narrative is pinging back and forth and the longing is spiralling like crazy, and the tension for them to get together is nearly unbearable.

Do you know what I'm talking about? Of course you do! I just love that. Now, don't get me wrong, I like the tension to 'get resolved' if you know what I mean, but I so so enjoy when it builds in a super huge way.

A recent outstanding example of this was Scandal by Carolyn Jewel. Whew, that was some great midbook longing! Which reminds me, I have to get Indiscreet. Also, Lord of Scoundrels by Loretta Chase.

Anyway, right now I'm reading Your Scandalous Ways, also by Loretta Chase, and getting that great hit of midbook longing. Actually, the longing starts well before the middle of the book.

One very satisfying thing Chase does is to take a detail from one scene and re-use it. Like, at one point, Francesca Bonnard, our elite Venetian prostitute heroine, is trying to sort of 'seduce' spy James Cordier on a wager. (You don't think I could bring you to your knees,"came her voice, cool and taunting. "Would you care to make a wager?" and he does.)

So they're in this enclosed gondola. And she proceeds to completely ignore him and langorously take off her gloves (and we know Loretta Chase loves gloves!)

She let the second glove drop onto her lap.

She adjusted the bracelets, letting her fingers trail lightly over the pearls and diamond circling her now naked wrists.

She lifted her hand.

He tensed.

She didn't touch him.

She touched herself, bringing her index finger to her right ear. She made a light path along the curve of her ear and behind it, lingering at the place below her ear where she liked to be kissed.

She felt him shift in his seat.

She ignored it. She pretended to be alone, enjoying her treasures, herself.

Then later, he's at her place, trying to do something connected with his spy goal of getting a packet of letters... "But here she was, all creamy smooth and sinfully curved under an mere wisp of cloth."

Cordier often tries to use positive self-talk to stifle his longing. During this later scene (and really through much of the book) he says things like: You've been tortured by experts, laddie. Pretend it's torture. Later, This isn't why you came, the voice reminded, that inner voice that had kept him alive for all these years.

But it doesn't work. Soon this:
He wanted to lose himself in her scent, in her. He wanted to forget everything else, to heed only this siren's call.

And
He knew there were no forevers and there was always a way out, yet he lost his way, lost his balance. He lost the warning voice, his guide.

Anyway, that bit from the gondola comes back:

He kissed her, but not on the wicked smile. He kissed her temple, and one spot at the top of her cheekbone. Then, remembering what she'd done last night, he followed the path she'd traced with her finger, around the delicate curve of her ear, and down. He pressed a tender, lingering kiss upon the spot where she'd paused.

She trembled.

Then, so did he.

Gulp. But of course, somebody comes, so the longing continues to build.

And of course, the longing of Francesca for James is just as intense. It is just so enjoyable to be in this part of a book! Not every historical is set up this way, but so many are. Maybe I'll be sick of it one day, but I'm not yet.

I know contemporaries, paranormals and other subgenres can contain a lot of longing, too--Nalini Singh totally comes to mind for great paranormal midbook longing, but I generally feel it more keenly with historicals. I think it's all the clothes and rules.

Questions

1. So, okay, this is only the second Loretta Chase I have read. Is she just really really good at pulling this off? Should I be going on a Loretta Chase binge?

2. Can you recommend any other books that have intense midbook longing?

Lord of Scoundrels: 5 favorite ending moments

It’s always such a good sign with a book when you think you’ve reached the high point (for me it was that icon scene) and then you realize there is WAY more going on. What a lovely book and a treat of a read. (Psst: spoilers ahoy!)

My top five ending moments (not in order):

1. Dain gives the little boy a bath. I love how Dain holds and cares for his unruly little puking son, and he's also kind of grappling with his own monstous sense of self. And then he makes all these connections with his own situation, and realizes his mother loved him enough to leave him behind, and that he can be the person to love Dominick. The presence of Dominick brought that to life in such a vivid way.

2. His arm works again. It was so excellent how the frozen arm figured in—I certainly didn’t predict it! It became immobile after Jess shot him, and then it comes out here that it had to do with his fear that she’d leave him. And then his arm comes back to life caring for his son!

At first I was thinking, it’s because he is whole now. But it’s also because he has agency as a human being. Even though his mother left him, he can make it so Dominick is not alone, and he can make it so he is not alone. I felt this was a psychologically rich twist.

3. Jess kicks Vawtry's ass. What a great heroine! She even seems quite injured, and I expected her to more just stop Vawtry him until Dain stepped in to take over, but no! She finishes the job.

4. Jess just totally lusts after Dain all the time. Sure, Jess is clever, and has this emotional attachment to Dain, but we’re never allowed to forget that, from the start, she just animal-lusted after him, ever since they were in that curio shop. I really enjoyed that scene where she confesses what she wanted to do to him in that shop.

5. '“Ti amo,” he said. And so ridiculously simple it was that he said it again in English this time, “I love you, Jess.”'

Lord of Scoundrels LOVEFEST

Great Moments from last night's reading
Book: Lord of Scoundrels
Author: Loretta Chase
Spoiler level: HIGH (Sarai and Lone C: beware!)

Oh, wow, can I be any more in love with this novel? Hardly.

Everything is so unexpected here. I richly enjoyed the engagement scene with the lawyer. And the non-starter wedding night. And how the seduction worked!

Later Jess says, “But getting you into bed—you, the greatest whoremonger in Christendom—gad it was worse than the time I had to drag Bertie to the tooth-drawer.” And they have this laugh, and Dain sees how it’s been for her, how he’s been. (Like his father!)

Anyway, last night I hit the part where she gives him the icon as a late birthday present. So lovely. To be honest, I had been worried Dain’s friends might do something to screw up their nascent relationship, more bets and things. Who knows, maybe they still will, but this is more a novel of emotions and weighty internal obstacles, not externally generated misunderstandings, and that icon, all I can say is OMG.

I didn’t expect it to come back. When it first appeared in the story I thought it was more a metaphor for a larger tale of disguised and discovered value. Dain admired it, I thought because the woman looked like his mother, and then Jess had an instinct about it and bought it and had it cleaned and it turned out to be beautiful and valuable, just as Dain would later.

But then that scene at the breakfast table where she gives it to him, and it turns out that Dain is the baby! And the little icon, at least to me, stands in for Dain’s heart, or more, a time where it was last whole, before it was destroyed. Oh, I just loved that. And his description, not realizing what he’s revealing:

'"She’s half-frowning, yes. Mildly irritated, perhaps, because the boy’s being troublesome. Yet she wears a glimmer of a smile, as though to reassure or forgive him. Because she understands that he doesn’t know any better. Innocent brat, he takes it all for granted: her smiles, reassurances, her patience…forgiveness. He doesn’t know what he has, let alone how to be grateful for it. And so he frets and scowls…in blissful infant ignorance."

Dain paused, for the room seemed to have grown too quiet suddenly, and the woman beside him too still.'

And he tries to cover, but without meaning to, she looks at him with pity, because she realizes.

And there’s the new obstacle. It’s not his stupid friends screwing them up, it’s something raw and emotional that scares real people - the exposure of your deepest wounds, and that somebody might view you not with love and admiration, but pity. Reading this, I literally thought to myself, Sheeeesh, this fucking story just gets better and better.

Maybe Loretta Chase consciously selected this icon to carry all this baggage, but really, the play of the icon feels like something the subconscious delivers up to an author, like a gift. This whole book is so wonderful for the way the obstacles are largely internal, but they’re mirrored and echoed externally.

Even the shooting scene, which is so wonderful, feels like that. His defenses are so thick, she just has to shoot him. And it looks like this blundery thing, but in fact she is an expert markswoman and very strong and smart, with a strong and smart heart.

Oh, Lord of Scoundrels!

Great Moments from last night's reading
Book: Lord of Scoundrels
Author: Loretta Chase
Spoiler level: pretty HIGH

I have a friend who is holding off on reading specific books until she is elderly, so she has things to look forward to. I suppose it might have been smart to do that with this book, but actually I'm glad I didn't, because I am SO into it. It is delightful at every turn. A feast! Still, I’m trying to savor it, though I may yet gobble it all up in one sitting. Or maybe ravish it. Maybe even tonight!

At present, however, I am just a third of the way through. There is just one enchanting scene after another.

Sigh. The glove scene in the coffee shop. What do I even say about it?

He had relieved whores beyond counting of frocks, stays, chemises, garters, and stockings. He’d never before in his life unbuttoned a gently bred maiden’s glove. He had committed salacious acts beyond number. He’d never once felt so depraved as he did now, as the last pearl came free and he drew the soft kid down, baring her wrist, and his dark fingers grazed the delicate skin he’d exposed.

He was too busy searching Dain’s Dictionary for a definition of his state—and too confused by what he read there—to realize that Miss Jessica Trent’s grey eyes had taken on the drunkenly bewildered expression of a respectable spinster being seduced in spite of herself.

Chase is exploiting the hell out of the rotating 3rd person point of view and I’m loving every minute of it. For example, with the two steamy kiss scenes that come after the glove, you’ll have Dain’s feverish POV in the moment, then Jessica’s, and then Dain’s again, but later, reflecting back in a heartbreakingly emotional way. One of my favorite examples of this so far is the way he reflects, hours later, on the kiss outside the ball:

…a firestorm of images, feelings, and one sweet, anguished moment…when she had kissed his big, loathsome nose…and cut his heart to pieces and put it back together again and made him believe he was not a monster to her. She had made him believe he was beautiful.

Lies, he told himself. They were all lies and tricks to trap him.

Reading this book, I feel like SUCH a girl. I love that Dain is not handsome, and emotionally wounded, and that Jessica wears all these silly hats and baubles that Dain hates, but then he keeps and treasures that one crushed hat from the rain scene. I love how clever she is. This book feels so well put together. The characters’ histories and goals make sense, and the way the peer groups work in - each with their own sorts of reputations to worry about - all dovetail so wonderfully.

I just got to the part where she shoots him (Katiebabs, I thought you were joking!) and I’m thinking both of them are about to have nothing to lose, which is a great place for characters to be, I suppose, unless you are SO worried about both of them like I am.

Some previous commenters seem to be on Dain’s side and some on Jess’. Do I have to pick sides? I want to love them both.