“This love drives us crazy but nobody’s walkin’ away; So, I guess we’ll have to do it the hard way”
Keith Urban, The Hard Way. Be Here
Duke of Slut. The Bad Boy. It all comes down to the same difference, in whatever subgenre of romance you happen to be talking about. They are arrogant and take the world as they wish to, including the woman at the center of the story. However, such a dissolute, seemingly connectionless lifestyle gets boring. And as a result, sometimes, you see a character change right before your eyes…just before they’re brought back to life by the woman they love. Garret Langham, the Earl of Mayne, is one of those characters.
Most of the characters profiled this week are at their worst when their stories are told. In fact, some of them are even in the process of earning their title as a bad boy or, Duke of Slut as the case may be. But by the time you get to his book, Pleasure for Pleasure, Garret Langham is at a crossroads. He had earned the title of the ‘Duke of Slut’ long ago, and he had become the man of choice for any particular lady of the ton who wished to have a rather infamous dalliance. He is also, by the time his book opens, the inspiration for a rather famous novel.
Most importantly, by the time his book opens, Mayne is also…engaged to be married. His fiancée is a Frenchwoman, who on the outside, seems the complete opposite of every single woman he had ever involved himself with. She is polite, prim and as proper as he expects himself to become. Which brings one of the central conflicts of Pleasure for Pleasure to light. It, at least in terms of Mayne’s trajectory, is about where he is expected to go as opposed to where he wishes to go.
“Here I am,” he says at the beginning of Pleasure for Pleasure, “with my reputation…and Sylvie dela Broderie agrees to marry me.” What reputation, you may ask ? Mayne’s well earned reputation as “The Duke of Slut” (or in his case the Earl of Slut) of course. “Yet Sylvie was different from all those women he had bedded,” he thinks to himself, “from the first to the thirtieth.”
How is she different ? It seems that Mayne sees Sylvie as his salvation, that she is innocent where he is not. That she is there, ready and waiting to serve as his way of cleaning up his past. And when he speaks of her, it is of the pure, chaste, love he feels for her. How much of a goddess she is, he tells people, remembering to include tidbits about her various gifts and talents. “She has the skill of a natural artiste, and her father gave her the best tutors in Paris….”
Of course, is this perfect goddess of a fiancée what Mayne wants?
“Mayne stood looking at her, feeling as if he’d been knocked off balance. Josie was so beautiful, with that cloud of witchy hair around her shoulders, her beautiful-curved laughing mouth and her intelligent eyes. ‘Christ, you’re breath-taking,” he said.”
Josie? Who is Josie? His heroine, of course. Not his fiancée. It is obvious in the way the he speaks of her, it is her he really cares for. And her he really wants. She stirs his blood. And she is not perfect. Yet all the same, he is suddenly the rakish Mayne of yore, the knight in shining armor who appears when Josie needs rescuing. It is he who teaches her how to walk in the proper manner during a drunken conversation, and it is he who is called to her side when it seems that all is lost.
But why? Because he becomes something else when he is with her. “With you,” he tells her, “I’m not …some dissolute rake, sleeping with anything with two legs….I never knew what love was.” The bottom line is that with Josie, Mayne is not following societal expectations of his own behavior-good or bad. He is following his heart.
Pleasure for Pleasure has always been my favorite Eloisa James novels for many reasons, but it is James’s depiction of Mayne’s trajectory that keeps it at the top of my list. He is a Duke of Slut, but more importantly, he is a man who learns to follow his heart. The hard way.
Question To Readers: What about those rakish historical heroes that learn they have feelings the hard way, and by hard way, I mean over the course of a number of books? Can you think of any others (I can think of one other offhand)? Do you think they’re capable, like Mayne did, of putting themselves on the road to redemption? Or do you think they need help?
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Kati
on Mar 18th, 2009
@ 12:41 pm:
Terrific Blog, Stacey! Mayne has always been one of my favorite bad boys. He just seemed to kind of revel in his bad boy status for so long. But when he decides to commit, he doesn’t do it halfway. It’s good stuff!
In terms of another bad boy whose trajectory is traced over a series of books, there’s Sam Starrett, who I think Stacy is writing about. He is knocked out by his heroine and it takes them BOOKs and BOOKs to come together! But it’s fantastic when it does.
But don’t you think it’s a risky thing that both James and Brockmann did? I mean, you build and build and build this character up, and your readers’ expectations rise and rise as the character deepens. And then you have to deliver a love story that will match reader fervor. I think it’s a difficult thing and not all authors could pull it off.
orannia
on Mar 18th, 2009
@ 2:30 pm:
Thank you Stacey! Garret Langham, the Earl of Mayne is a great hero! I loved Pleasure for Pleasure, mostly because we FINALLY had Mayne at the center of the book but also because Josie isn’t a ‘typical’ heroine.
And for your second question, I need to put my thinking cap on
Andrea
on Mar 18th, 2009
@ 2:45 pm:
Great blog, Stacey!! I absolutely love Mayne, so it’s no wonder that PFP is my favorite book by EJ. We waited so long to see who would be his heroine and how it would happen and it was sooooo worth it. *sigh*
As for your question….well, in Suzanne Enoch’s current series, The Notorious Gentleman, bad boy Bramwell Johns has had a secondary role in both of the first two books, so I can’t wait to see how his heroine brings him to his knees!!
Stacey
on Mar 18th, 2009
@ 3:04 pm:
Kati-
Thank you for the fabulous and, I think, insightful comment
“And then you have to deliver a love story that will match reader fervor. I think it’s a difficult thing and not all authors could pull it off.”
My answer, of course is that it’s only difficult to match reader fervor, when there isn’t palpable chemistry between the hero and the heroine. And with both Sam/Alyssa and Mayne/Josie, that chemistry was there, clear and made it easier for readers to feel the story was worth the wait. I’m sure we both know of situations where the chemistry isn’t there …
Stacey
on Mar 18th, 2009
@ 3:07 pm:
Orannia-
‘ but also because Josie isn’t a ‘typical’ heroine.’
She isn’t
I love that too, and I especially love that turret sequence because of it. *sighs*
Stacey
Stacey
on Mar 18th, 2009
@ 3:11 pm:
Andrea-
‘Bramwell Johns has had a secondary role in both of the first two books, so I can’t wait to see how his heroine brings him to his knees!!’
That will be an interesting book too. I can’t wait to see it either *grins excitedly*
‘We waited so long to see who would be his heroine and how it would happen and it was sooooo worth it. *sigh*’
Oh yes. It was. I have a feeling the spine on my copy is not much longer for this world
Maria Lokken
on Mar 18th, 2009
@ 3:35 pm:
Orianna speaks the truth. Josie wasn’t a typical heroine and that made Mayne’s ‘coming around’ from bad boy to hero worth the wait.
Stacey
on Mar 18th, 2009
@ 3:45 pm:
What about *throws out a name* Alec Knight, from Gaelen Foley’s Knight Miscellany series? I adore him to pieces because of the way he finds his purpose in his book
orannia
on Mar 18th, 2009
@ 3:50 pm:
I especially love that turret sequence because of it. *sighs*
That was a great scene
And now I want to re-read that scene and the whole book! Maria & Marisa, while I love the Duke of Slut concept it is playing havoc with my TBR list!
Stacey
on Mar 18th, 2009
@ 4:42 pm:
In regards to multi-book arcs, this is what Eloisa said when I asked her :
“I took to the format (of a character changing over a number of books) because I’m lucky enough to be able to write in a series so I have space. And I got bored with reading ‘Dukes of Sluts’ (to use your term) who turn on a dime and suddenly reform. It seems unlikely to me. There’s nothing more fun than the time to reform a complex character over many pages…
I just finished the Duke of Villiers’s novel (A Duke of Her Own, pubbing in August). I wrote about Villiers over the space of six novels. He’s very different from Mayne, but equally (to me) fascinating and complex. Watching him come to terms and face up to the responsibility of fathering six illegitimate children (surely this qualifies him for the title Duke of Slut?) has been as much fun for me as, hopefully, for readers.”
Thank you Eloisa
I definitely cannot wait to see Villiers story when it finally unfolds !
Stacey
Stacy ~
on Mar 18th, 2009
@ 6:56 pm:
Hey Stacey, I remember reading this series, and I loved the complete wickedness of Mayne, and how he thought he could redeem himself with someone like Sylvie, whom he believes will make him respectable. Who he really needed was a woman he could love, “warts” and all. I am a huge fan of character growth over several books (as you’ll see in my post about Sam) because I think it allows me to fall harder for the hero to watch him go from a complete selfish bastard into a man worthy of hero status.
I admit that I also cannot wait for Villiers’ story. I’m curious to see how it will all play out. Ha!
Gannon
on Mar 18th, 2009
@ 7:46 pm:
Pleasure for Pleasure is one of my favorite EJ books! Watching Mayne’s “evolution” throughout the series was so entertaining. And the fact that Josie did not fit the typical heroine pattern made their relationship even better. I think I just may have to re-read it soon. *sigh*
I’m dying to see what Eloisa has in store for Villiers!
Janga
on Mar 18th, 2009
@ 8:22 pm:
In my reading experience, Mayne is unique. His character arc takes him, in five books, from a man totally absorbed in himself and his own pleasures to a man totally committed to one woman, a man who weeps with joy over his newborn daughter. Watching him move through all the stages from self-indulgence to loving what he sees as a female version of himself in Helene to vindictiveness when he loses her to self-disgust, self-knowledge, the search for fulfillment and its false image (Sylvie), and finally to loving Josie more than himself is a journey that engages my reader’s heart and writer’s head. Mayne is a marvel. He’s not my favorite Eloisa James hero, but he’s the one who fascinates me most. Of course, Villiers still has two books to go. I think he’s going to prove even more complex and perhaps more fascinating than Mayne.
Laura
on Mar 19th, 2009
@ 8:08 am:
If you go back a ways, Judith McNaught brought her men back from book to book. She did this in “Almost Heaven”, “Once & Always”,”Kingdom of Dreams”, “Until You”, and “Something Wonderful.” The characters were note main ones, but they were sprinkled in there. They would not be considered a series though. They are wonderful books, very sweet and enduring.
Also, Pleasure for Pleasure was my first EJ book. I liked it alot, but I’m wishing I would have started from the beginning.