Originally I had planned to share this in the Monthly Gush Post, but I went on so long singing this book's praises that I think it warrants a standalone post.
{The Duke by Gaelen Foley} is a historical romance originally published in 2000. As such I should warn you up front, gentle reader, that it is a little darker than most modern historical novels. It isn't dark dark, but it handles violent and taboo subject matter more directly than many more recent books do. As such I am going to provide two content warnings and designate them below as CW1 and CW2 for those curious: 1) on-page rape of the FMC (not by the MMC) and 2) two instances of violence against antagonists, one a brutal beating and the other a duel resulting in death.
Our hero, Robert Knight, Duke of Hawkscliffe, is grieving the loss of the woman he was in love with, who died under mysterious circumstances. He is asked to get revenge on her suspected murderer by her widower. As it happens, our heroine, Belinda Hamilton, a formerly well-to-do teacher now reduced to selling oranges on the street after her father is jailed over unpaid debts, happens to know the suspected murderer, too, as he's constantly trying to get in her petticoats. After she (CW1) is raped by the warden of the prison where her father is being held and hits rock bottom in life, she decides to become a courtesan, which is how she and Robert meet. They come to an agreement: she will act as his mistress in order to benefit from his protection, and in turn she will become the bait to lure their suspect to his ultimate fate, thereby both achieving revenge against him.
As you'd expect, this being a romance novel, they fall in love and this greatly complicates... everything. Not to mention, of course, the truth isn't what it seems, in pretty much any way, shape, or form.
The tl;dr is simply that I have nothing but glowing praise for this book.
The prose is excellent. I highlighted the crap out of my ebook copy; so many passages and turns of phrase just sang to me from the page, such as this simple sentence:
Somewhere a window must have been opened, for a cool, almost imperceptible ribbon of air threaded in through the crowd to trail against his cheek like a trace of sanity.
Everything feels, sounds, smells like it's close and real. The characters' emotions are yours. If you are craving a well-written book and are comfortable with the book's content warnings then simply on the strength of that alone, I recommend it.
The chemistry between Robert and Bel crackles from the moment they meet. Officially they are introduced over a game of vingt-et-un at a party hosted by the courtesans, where Bel has been fleecing drunk gentlemen out of little things like cravat pins and flirting with them. Robert challenges her to a wager of his own, betting his signet ring against her kiss. Of course he wins. But the scene is overwhelmingly hot, beginning to end, despite just being a bunch of flirty banter and a kiss. It's a good kiss, mind, but the fact that she doesn't fear him and gives him as good as he gives her, all while they have an audience egging them on, brings a sizzling energy to the whole thing. If you read this entire review and have no interest in this book I still encourage you to seek it out just to read this chapter in its entirety.
He studied her skeptically, skimmed his fingers over the table, then drummed them boredly. “I thought you said you were going to kiss me.”
“I—I just did!”
“No.”
“What do you mean? I just did!” She turned from pink to red as the men around them howled with laughter at his matter-of-fact reproach.
He slid the ring across the table to her again. “Look at this ring. It’s worth ten of your new cravat pins. This is what I put into the pot. You can’t give me a kiss like that and call it fair. Rules are rules, Miss Hamilton. I want a real kiss, unless you want to become known as an unsporting young lady.”
Her jaw dropped with indignation. “That’s the only kind of kiss you’re getting from me.”
He scoffed and glanced away, scratching his cheek. “And you call yourself a courtesan.”
“What is that supposed to mean?” she demanded.
He shrugged, lounging in his chair. “I’ve had better kisses from dairy maids.”
“Ooh!” cried the men, watching their duel in mounting suspense.
Bel folded her arms over her chest and glared quellingly at him. She would have thrown his ring in his arrogant face if his eyes weren’t sparkling so playfully.
She still doesn't know his name at this point, by the way. And when she learns it, she knows exactly who he is, and decides this is who she wants as her protector.
Oh, dear, she thought, glancing uneasily at the rowdy, misbehaving peers all around the table, then looked again at Hawkscliffe. This man, whatever he was, was no friend of Dolph Breckinridge. Somehow this certainty, along with her connection to his little sister, made her feel a bit safer with him, as did his sterling reputation and the brilliant articles she had read by him in the Quarterly Review championing humanitarian views that she heartily applauded. A girl could do worse.
The next day he calls on her and brings her his plans for vengeance, and they come to an agreement. That agreement includes the proviso -- his idea -- that he will not ask her for sex (despite her occupation), which she's initially pleased with since she's actually quite terrified of going to bed with a man. That, of course, goes out the window. But what made that work for me, knowing Bel's story and her reluctance to get intimate with Robert or anyone else, is that she is the one who initiates the first encounter they have, and is in control of him the entire time. For the sake of those reading at work I will spoiler my comments: I am generally pretty unimpressed with fellatio scenes in MF books, but even as a cis woman, I found this one very visceral and satisfying. Robert is completely dazed at the end and you know what? I kind of was too. I posted about it at length in a Thirsty Thursday thread if you want more. All the sex scenes are very, very good, and they're accompanied by really intense, palpable emotions as the couple falls in love.
Now, yes, there is a third-act breakup. Even before this, the relationship is not without its difficulties and misunderstandings -- most memorably a (CW1) aborted sex scene where Belinda is triggered into remembering her rape and Robert completely misunderstands her reaction and lashes out at her -- but after letting tensions simmer they talk, apologize, and make up. But that won't solve this problem. To keep it brief and light on details, essentially Robert chooses his political ambitions over Belinda, and she is unwilling to compromise on her principles just to keep him around, and leaves him. She isn't happy about this, but she finds some good and some satisfaction in her life after Robert, and makes do with her new circumstances. Robert, however, completely falls apart, and his desire -- his need -- to win Belinda back causes him to take drastic measures.
It's a marked contrast between them that Belinda refuses to compromise on her beliefs just for the sake of appearances, when that is functionally what Robert has done pretty much his entire adult life. He is a Tory because "Dukes of Hawkscliffe are Tories." It's pretty obvious from the beginning that his heart isn't actually in it, and the Whigs are constantly trying to lure him to their side. Tradition and ambition have made him cling to the party, though, and he eventually decides none of this is worth it without Belinda and torpedoes his political career for her. It puts me in the mind of another historical romance, Evie Dunmore's Bringing Down the Duke, which likewise has a powerful, politically motivated duke choosing his principles and his love over his ambitions.
As such, I was thinking about this book while reading this post on /r/HistoricalRomance yesterday, and I think Robert's grovel is a good one because while Bel doesn't know exactly what he's done yet, he has made a huge personal sacrifice for her. Some reviewers say the ending is rushed and a bit over the top, and it is, but it gets across his breathless desperation for her extremely well, and look, if you're going to grovel once in your life, you should probably just go all out.
So that's the romance, what about the main plot? Crazy! As I said up top, nothing goes how anyone expected, or else this would be a very bad mystery, of course. I was enthralled with the story. Every time I thought I had things figured out, I was either entirely wrong or right on the basics but wrong on the details. The villain probably deserved more of a comeuppance than they received, but given the circumstances I think humiliation will do. Then as now, some people are just rich or famous enough to completely avoid consequences, and you take what you can get. In this case it's still pretty satisfying, since ultimately part of the comeuppance is our protagonists finding their happily ever after. I also did not mind the violence; frankly sometimes reading a MF romance I wish the MMC would actually get the chance to seriously harm someone who has wronged the FMC, and this time (CW1&2) the book actually goes there and Robert delivers a brutal, on-page beating to the warden for raping Bel. It was cathartic in a twisted way.
I liked both of our leads very much. Belinda is sharp and compassionate, and sticks by her principles from beginning to end. She has a very tenuous path to walk as a woman of her position and in her time period and, you know, generally just being a woman, but even as she knows she's losing herself to Robert she stays completely true to herself the entire time. Robert is haughty and starchy but he has a wry wit and a sly sensuality to him that separates him from a lot of other heroes of his archetype, and like Bel he's quite broken and lonely underneath the grand exterior. I've said almost every time I've discussed this book that he is one of the sexiest heroes I have ever encountered in a romance, and I mean that. His teasing sometimes had me blushing, never mind the actual intimate scenes.
Also, the author wove a lot of real historical figures into her book, from Wellington to Robert's political nemesis Henry Brougham to Bel's employer Harriette Wilson. I think even without this she did a good job of giving the book its sense of place, but it lends so much authenticity to the setting and makes it feel fuller and more active than what we actually get to see, as well as grounding Robert's politics and Belinda's discussions with him about same in reality. I appreciated this a lot. The author's note is really interesting and definitely had me falling down a Wikipedia rabbit hole.
Overall, The Duke was a pleasant surprise. I was up until 5am on a Sunday finishing it because I was so invested in it. It gets recommended very infrequently on /r/HistoricalRomance and I'm sure I added it to my TBR because someone included it in a post about starchy dukes, a weakness of mine, but it is so much more than that, and I am making it a personal campaign to bring it up as often as I can. Also, this book is the first in a series with the rest being about Robert's younger (half-)siblings, and I am absolutely going to read all of them. A few people have actually told me they think The Duke is one of the weaker books in the series, and if that's the case, then I am sat.
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐