DUCHESS BY NIGHT
Eloisa James
Avon
ISBN-13: 978-0061245572
July 2008
Historical Romance

What a thoroughly entertaining read! DUCHESS BY NIGHT completely took me by surprise and in a totally decadent way. The third story in the Desperate Duchesses series, I would caution not to try this one on its own, without reading DESPARATE DUCHESSES and AN AFFAIR BEFORE MIDNIGHT first. (It is not a requirement, but a strong suggestion to enjoy this one more – there are a lot of reoccurring characters like Villiers who it would be a shame to miss the back story.)

Harriet, the Duchess of Berrow is a staid “good girl” and is starting to feel passed over. No one ever really sees her, and if they do, they tend to avoid her anyway. You see, her husband committed suicide over a chess game with the Duke of Villiers. Two years have passed since that fateful event, but the ton does not seem to notice, they just look upon her with pity. When her friend schemes to make her wayward husband return to her, Harriet offers to help out. Rusticating to Lord Strange’s estate, which is known for its licentious going-ons, Isodel is hoping to drag her husband back from Egypt. The problem is that Strange does not hold much with the nobility and definitely not Duchesses. So Villiers suggests that Harriet go as his distant cousin Mr. Cope.

Jem Strange is an interesting character. Enigmatic, complex, and appealing. He is a creative genius, and though we do not get to see what makes him tick until the very end, he is worth the wait to unwrap. Friends with Villiers, he agrees to take Mr. Cope (a very youthful and effeminate looking man) under his wing. Jem and “Harry”/Harriet start on a friendship that both begin to treasure. Learning how to navigate her men’s clothing and demeanor, Harriet is really coming to enjoy the freedom of horseback riding astride and fencing and all other liberating activities.

Jem, on the other hand is uncomfortable with his feelings for Harry. He is open minded about sex, and in decadent Georgian England, this is not as far of a stretch as say it would have been in Victorian England. Nonetheless, he is not very happy about what he is feeling. It is not easy to write the “disguise plot” with credibility, but the setting and the characters that Ms. James has written here works brilliantly. Disguises within disguises and it is not until the end that all are stripped away. Even Jem’s daughter, a precocious eight year old, who acts more 16 is described in such a way as to make the plot work. I hate when authors use children to further their plot, but again, it is done in such a way as to be a perfect fit in this Machiavellian (or maybe the better analogy would be Shakespearian?) plot that Ms. James usually writes.

While I liked her other books in this series, what makes this book outstanding to me is that it focuses on Harriet and Jem. In the previous books, I felt like I jumped around to the secondary characters too much and it pulled me from the story. While there ARE secondary characters in this book, (and I really do want to know what happens to Villiers) they add to this story not distract from it. They are more sprinkled in throughout the book and not prominent in it. One last comment, for those of you who like a good grovel scene, Ms. James nailed it in DUCHESS BY NIGHT. While I do not think Jem is one hundred percent wrong, he does grovel nicely. Definitely worth picking this one up!

Reviewed by Sarah Silversmith
Rating 5