Book Review: Must Love Dukes

Must Love DukesBy Elizabeth MichelsSourcebooks Casablanca, 2014 Elizabeth Michels’ latest Regency romp starts off in 1815 when young Devon Grey, the Duke of Thornwood, is on his way to his favorite disreputable London tavern when he notices he’s being followed. Grey has had a frustrating day and wants to escape from it for an hour or two, but he finds he can’t ignore his rather inept follower, who turns out to be a young woman who eventually introduces herself as Lily Whitby and joins him for a drink.Their talk is the first real opening scene of Must Love Dukes (the title is completely unconnected to the book’s content and is here mainly to echo the third-tier dating meme “must love dogs”), and of course historically speaking the whole scene is just about as realistic as if the lady and the Duke ran into the crew of the U.S.S. Enterprise: no matter what her ulterior motive (and as ulterior motives go, Lily has a strong one), no well-born 19^th century woman would any more dream of joining a stranger unescorted in a dank bar for a casual drink than she would of walking through Piccadilly stark naked.So the only way you’ll enjoy the book is to start right away overlooking these games on Michels’ part, since that opening scene is neither the last nor the most dramatic of them. And readers looking for a quick, fun hour’s story should indeed play along, because this is an author with a spry, sparkling story to tell – starting with that opening scene, in which our hero and heroine realize that they like each other even before they realize they’re attracted to each other. Lily is cagey about her own identity, since she doesn’t want to reveal her reason for following the Duke, but after a little drinking, she begins to open up about her own cloistered life in a small town:

“Oh, I live there still. In a small town with no society to speak of. This is practically the first time I’ve left home, other than my time at finishing school … I used to look out at the sea that bothers our estate and dream of traveling to distant lands … You know, if a book exists on the subject of travel, I believe I have read it. However, London is as far as I have gotten as of yet.”

She charms him utterly. “She had a wistful look in her eye that he wished he could harness and hold in his palm forever,” he thinks at one point. “She laughed, her blue eyes dancing at his story. He would tell a thousand stories a thousand times over only to watch those bright eyes laugh.”Both of them stagger out into the darkening twilight, and it doesn’t take long for science fiction to intervene once again: they repair to the Duke’s palatial townhouse and drunkenly tear each other’s clothes off. Early the next morning, having achieved her goal (it looks like theft, but the plot deepens it nicely), Lily steals away in secret, allowing herself one last glance:

His coal-black hair curled ever so slightly across his brow, and the strong features she remembered from last night softened with sleep, giving him the face of innocence on a world-hardened body. It was too bad that she would not be able to gaze into his eyes once more. She wanted to solidify the look of storms clouds rolling in over the sea forever in her mind. How she wished she could talk with him once more and make him understand.

A year passes in the narrative, and slowly, with delightful tantalization, Michels orchestrates events to bring the two of them together again (although the actual moment itself is curiously muted) – at a ball, of course. Lily is mortified, and the Duke has the perfect lever to make her dance to his whims. This kind of prolonged-revenge sub-plot is easy enough to mishandle – thankfully, Michels works it with a professional ear for comic timing almost to the book’s very end (two of the final, climactic scenes stumble to a positively mysterious extent, perhaps due to haste?).  It’s true that some of the secondary characters are bluntly one-dimensional; Lily’s two loutish brothers are almost unbelievably loutish, and her gay brother can’t go ten words without a “darling” or a “fabulous.” But her main pair are winningly rendered – by the time their battle of wills reaches its conclusion, most readers will be rooting for both sides.