Product Description

Wretched be the woman of wealth and fortune who fails to produce a suitable heir….

And wretched is what Duchess Camille feels living with the cruel and debauched duke. But that soon turns to desperation when she learns her lecherous husband is plotting to have her killed to make way for a more nubile and fertile companion. Knowing she cannot sit idly by and wait for death, she flees into the night, taking with her her own young lover—the stable hand Henri—and her most loyal servants.

With a mind to finding refuge with Maxime, her first love who years ago ignited her sexuality, Camille and her servants take cover in brothels along the way and succumb to the physical delights on offer, sating their longings and fueling jealousies with one another. But the duke's men are not far behind, and Camille knows they must press on, hoping against hope that the man who has every reason to turn her away will remember the fervent passion that once coursed between them.…

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #689759 in Books
• Published on: 2008-12-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 384 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9780373605262
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
• Click here to view our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
The Duchess Camille's maid, Sylvie, draped a blue silk robe over her shoulders. Camille had to restrain herself from clutching it to her bare breasts. Normally, Camille had no particular emotion about being dressed or undressed by her servants— it was too common an occurrence—but today each touch made her flinch. Sylvie's anger made her tension worse, even when demonstrated only as a hint of roughness when tugging Camille's long, dark hair free of the robe. Sylvie hadn't yet cleansed the splotch of Camille's blood from the front of her own simple blue gown, and her long blond braid extruded messy wisps. It didn't help to know Sylvie was not angry at her, but the Duke Michel.

Across the room, the midwife finished washing in a porcelain basin painted all over with flowers no larger than a woman's thumb, the fierce jerks of her arms dripping water and imported jasmine-scented lather onto carpet so thick it swallowed the feet. The midwife's cropped hair glistened in the light of a dozen fat candles. They were surrounded by all the luxury one could want, except for safety.

Camille didn't dare give in to her own anger. She had denied it for so long that it had gone solid in her belly like a chunk of dirty glass. She felt sick with it, and weary down to her marrow. She would give anything to be alone for a few moments, to collect herself, but if she sent them away now, after the examination she'd just endured, she would reveal her weakness. She had already let slip her emotions once today, when the duke had told her Lord Alphonse was dead. In her distress, she had nearly revealed his mission, the mission which had led to his death. She would keep her dignity now, and with it her secrets.

Sylvie said, "I will fetch you a glass of wine, madame, and ice for your bruises."

"Sit," Camille ordered, unable to bear a continuation of Sylvie's earlier pacing of holes in the plush gold carpet. She glanced toward the washbasin, carefully avoiding her reflection in the nearby full-length oval mirror, its wide frame like a tangle of golden brambles. "Mistress Annette?"

The midwife was thirty years old at the most, and normally worked at the brothel in the town, caring for the diseases from which prostitutes suffered and helping to birth what children they might bear. She was a tiny woman with hair cut close to her scalp and a scar on her chin. For her surreptitious visits to the palace, she dressed in a baggy dun gown, a sparrow flitting into a golden cage and out of it again, unnoticed by any except Sylvie and Camille. Camille had never seen her elsewhere. She did not even know where Mistress Annette lived; Sylvie always fetched her, when she was needed. But she would—had—entrusted Annette with her health and life.

"You were not pregnant, Your Grace."

Camille did not allow herself to show any reaction, but all the same, Sylvie rose from her chair and returned to where Camille stood.

"Am I injured?"

Mistress Annette picked up a towel and dried her hands. "You are bruised," she said, as if Camille had forgotten the reddened swelling over her jaw and cheekbone, her skin broken from the impact of the duke's rings. Her left shoulder ached from slamming into the silken wallpaper of his private audience room; her hip and elbow throbbed from hitting the marble floor.

"There is no injury inside?"

"No, Your Grace." Mistress Annette set down the towel and stepped closer, until she stood within arms' reach. She said calmly, "He will kill you one day, you know."

Sylvie began to speak but Camille held up a hand for silence. "I could become pregnant. I am not too old."

Mistress Annette crossed her arms across her chest. "Your Grace, I am hard put to remember you are not just any woman. Because in this matter, you are certainly as unwise as any I've met."

Camille heard Sylvie catch her breath; ironic, as Sylvie was not afraid to speak her mind to her duchess, either. "If I give the duke an heir, he will have no need to find another duchess."

"His Grace has no bastards, but not for lack of trying. Not a one. If I were you, I would find another sire, and pass the child off as his."

Mistress Annette had never stated it so boldly before. Camille shook her head in refusal. She had married Michel, a younger son, and in becoming her consort, he'd become duke, with power over her. She could have protested her father's order to marry Michel and run away, but she had not, foolishly fearing the duchy would suffer without her. She had spoken the vows with her own voice. Once she had done so, she had a responsibility to her marriage, and a responsibility to her duchy's people. She had stood up to her mistake for over twenty years.

A few blows should not weaken her resolve so much. Except, this time Lord Alphonse had died. He'd been killed while trying to help her, not even knowing that the appeal he carried to Lord Maxime betrayed his duke. He'd been barely older than Annette or Sylvie. Sylvie might very well be next.

"Madame!"

Camille blinked as the room slowed and settled. Sylvie was holding her arm, fingers digging painfully into her bruised muscles. Mistress Annette ducked beneath Camille's other arm and supported her to her bed. The underside of the bed's canopy, blue and gold like the sheets and coverlet, bore appli-quéd figures of men plowing fields and sowing grain, a transparent allegory to encourage the fertility of the couples who lay within. Except Michel had never taken her here; she'd always been brought to his chambers, or more lately, wherever he felt she would be uncomfortable and refuse his advances.

"He will kill you," Annette said again, without emphasis, as if stating the sky was blue. She laid the back of her hand against Camille's forehead, then her cheek. Camille closed her eyes; that single tender touch brought her close to shattering. "Sylvie, fetch blankets."

Nauseated and beginning to shiver, Camille said, "I'm only hungry. I didn't eat while Sylvie went to find you."

Annette tucked a pillow beneath Camille's feet. She repeated, "He will kill you. And you know what will happen then. He will rape this duchy, and then move on to the next, just as your father did."

Even now, Camille could not bring herself to say aloud that she had failed, that Michel had indeed won, even when it was true. She said, "You must leave the palace, before you're found in my apartments."

"Never fear, Your Grace. Unlike you, I have concern for my own skin."

Sylvie returned and spread blankets over Camille's feet before moving upward. "Madame, you need rest. Annette, what must I do?"

"Convince her to find someone else to get her with child," Annette said. "And have a care that he's healthy, and looks enough like the duke."

Camille was no longer allowed to ride, but she could still venture out onto the palace's high white walls and glimpse her horses from afar. Two weeks after Mistress Annette's visit, she strolled there, her two eunuch guards trailing behind. Kaspar and Arno knew when she was not in the mood for conversation; this cool spring evening, they did not even speak quietly with each other.

The breeze from outside was sharper up on the walls, and she smelled a hint of rain mingled with the grass and manure of the paddocks below. She slipped into an embrasure, concealing herself from anyone's view—anyone except her eunuchs, of course—and gazed toward the stable that held her mare, Guirlande, and all the others she'd spent so long cosseting, training and schooling.

The stableboy was riding Lilas, his body seemingly immobile atop her sleek back as she danced patterns into the loose dirt of the riding ring. Only his thick brown hair ruffled in the wind. Four years ago, the duke had forbidden her to ride, and since that day she had not been to the stables, nor near her horses, nor had she spoken to their keeper. But she had years ago watched the boy be trained to ride. She had ridden out with him, and she knew his posture and seat, even from this distance. Her Lilas was in good hands.

She wondered what he looked like now that he was closer to his man's growth. She remembered big hands, lush eyelashes and an engaging, open smile. He would be almost twenty now, and might have changed a great deal. It occurred to her that he was half her age. If she had borne a child in the first years of her marriage to Michel, the stableboy was the right age to be her son.

Sylvie had reminded her that the stableboy's eyes were blue. Like the duke's.

Normally, she would watch until she had caught at least a glimpse of each of her horses, and perhaps drawn in her sketchbook, but this evening she turned away and strode toward her own wing of the palace. The wall's stone felt cold beneath her thin slippers. Kaspar and Arno fell in behind her, their movements betrayed by the faintest chiming of their weapons; they followed her down the turret staircase, across a square of immaculate garden that replaced the old bare defensive area, and through enormous mahogany doors carved with the ducal arms, each door swung wide by a footman in the duke's livery.

Camille led her eunuchs past the locked door of her audience room and through a hidden doorway. The narrow secondary corridor leading to her suite of rooms was thickly carpeted in blue and gold, an agreeable softness to her cold feet. Camille did not allow herself to slow and appreciate the softly patterned gold wallpaper, the candles muted behind colored glass or the paintings of horses that adorned the walls. Sylvie would have dismissed the rest of the staff by now, and they would have less than an hour of privacy.

Kaspar and Arno followed her through the outer rooms and into her bedchamber where Sylvie waited, perched on the edge of a spindly, decorative chair that Camille had never liked. "All is as you wished, madame," Sylvie said, meaning that the suite was deserted but for the four of them.

For this meeting, they all should sit, Camille thought, for she asked more of her servants than duty. She looked to Kaspar and indicated the empty chairs. Kaspar grinned. "Perhaps not, Your Grace. I fear it would shatter beneath my weight." He was taller than most and t...

Customer Reviews

Enjoyable erotic romance
I enjoyed this book, especially because it centers around a strong independent woman, (the Duchess) who fights to regain what is rightfully hers in a mysterious world that had echoes of pre-Revolutionary France and Georgian England but also contains unique fantasy elements of its own. The sex is interesting, erotic and varied, the characters well-written and the ending very satisfactory for all concerned. I'm looking forward to this authors next book.

An unsensational read
This was the first book I've read from Harelquin's "Spice" line, and it may well be my last.

I was disappointed by the Duchess. The cover an blurb promised a sexy romp framed in a well-constructed story, but erotic romance lovers beware, that is not what the book delivers. While the sexual content is high, this book is far from sexy. Most of contact reads as sexual violation more than a mutually pleasing interlude. It is very base with little satisfaction.

The story redeems the work slightly - very slightly. The author turns gender stereotypes around with an older, titles woman, the young servant who becomes her lover, dominant women and eunechs. This play on sexualtity and power are not enough to salvage to this read, however.

If you are looking for a heavy-handed psudointellectual read which includes course sex of questionable consensuality, this book might appeal. I, however, am not impressed.

superb erotic historical romance
Their marriage was arranged by their parents as a political deal. However, Duchess Camille fears her cheating violent husband Michel plans to dump her for failing to provide him with an heir and a spare. With no place to go if he throws her out or worse if she stays based on the bruises his cruelty could one day kill her, Camille plans to ask Henri the stable hand to make her pregnant.

However Michel goes berserk so Camille flees for her life. Henri, her maid Sylvie and her two eunuchs Arno and Kaspar accompany her to the only potential haven the home of Camille's first love Maxime. She knows if Michel or his thugs catch her she will be raped be-fore being killed and her friends tortured and murdered. Hiding in brothels, they trek towards Maxime's home while enjoying the fruits of their respites.

This erotic historical romance is a fun entertaining tale that in some ways will remind readers of the Fielding classic The History of Tom Jones with its bawdy underpinning to a strong cat and mouse story line. The cast is a delight especially the title characters and those they meet in the brothels while the audience will desire for the mean odious villain to be converted with a not sharp knife to a eunuch. Victoria Jansen provides sub-genre fans with a tour of houses of ill repute providing haven to the harried runaways.

Harriet Klausner