I think Miranda Neville must have magic because she has the ability to write books that feature characters or plot devices that normally don’t work for me and yet I find myself devouring the story. Lady Windermere’s Lover is that kind of book. Normally I’d be gritting my teeth because the hero, Damian, is an unrepentant ass bag for most of the book, but somehow it worked for me beautifully.

This is a marriage of convenience story, which is admittedly one of my big catnips. When Damian, Earl of Windermere, comes of age he stupidly gets drunk and gambles away his country seat and inheritance. In an effort to make it right he takes a job with the Foreign Office and marries Cynthia, a young and wealthy but common-born woman whose uncle just happens to hold the Windermere estate now.

When the book opens, Damian has returned home after a year abroad to find that his awkward, shy wife has changed greatly. The woman he left was frumpy, uncomfortable, and generally painfully eager to please and impress. The woman he returns to is beautiful, polished, traveling in hoity-toity circles, and maybe sleeping with his ex-best friend.

Important things to note here:

1. Damian was a total asshole to Cynthia during the few weeks they knew each other. He intentionally alienated her and didn’t even kiss her when they had sex.

2. Julian, Duke of Denford and said ex-best friend, is basically sex on a stick. He’s dark, wicked, and I suspect composed entirely of orgasms and a few red blood cells. In the beginning, I wanted Julian to be the hero of this book. On a happy note he is the hero of Neville’s December release Duke of Dark Desires.

So Damian returns home and he’s all asshurt because his wife might be sleeping with someone else. The fact that he treated her horribly, abandoned her for a year, and left her to navigate the ton without a friend is entirely lost on him.

Damian is a difficult character to like. On the one hand, he’s an unrepentant dick for most of the book. On the other hand, he talks dirty in French. He treats his wife abysmally, but he DOES bring marijuana back from Iran. So he’s got a few hash-marks in the plus column, but not many. It seemed to me that he judged others’ behavior through the lens of his own selfishness and irresponsibility.

Damian does some loathsome things. This is where the Neville-magic works. The conflict of this book hinges on Damian being self-absorbed and immature. He’s an alphahole. Normally those characters do not work for me, but in this book, I was okay with it. I didn’t want Damian to win Cynthia back so much as I wanted him to repent for his dickishness and deserve her love, and that’s what Neville makes happen slowly, oh so slowly. I think part of my accepting Damian’s abhorrent behavior was that his self-awareness and realization of his immaturity comes in fits and starts. He doesn’t have an epiphany and change overnight (although there is a black moment).

The fact that Cynthia is so over him helps. She is no longer the young, naïve young wife who is nervous about her new standing and desperate to please her husband. For the record, she’s not sleeping with Julian, but she lets Damian think she is because fuck him, that’s why. She’s connected with a group of artists and aristocrats and she’s sort of embezelling from her husband to fund charitable works. Even though she’s very attracted to Damian and always has been, she’s not about to renew marital congress with him because he’s an asshole.

As they get to know each other in the context of their marriage, Damian starts to appreciate his wife and see her as a real person, not just a means to an end. Cynthia starts to forgive Damian for his abandonment. None of it’s easy though, and if they take one step forward, they take a few back, too. It feels very real.

At times Cynthia felt a little too good to be true—a little too perfect, a little too kind, a little too precious. But I forgave that too because I loved this pair together. Also Cynthia finds a kitten in the rain in a scene that should have been very saccharine, but instead I was all like TEH BABY KITTEHZ! Score one for Team Cat who has been getting pushed out by all the puppy pet-moppets lately. Also, what the hell did they use for cat litter back in Regency times? I bet it was not clumping.

Anyway, as much as I loved the conflict (and the kittehz), I loved the humor and the eroticism of this book more. This is a hot historical, and it’s got moments of genuine levity too.

There’s a great scene where Damian burns some of that Iranian pot in an effort to loosen up Cynthia and seduce her. He provides her with some amazing orgasms, only to have her say, “Thanks that’s great,” and fall asleep with her cat, leaving him with a massive case of blue balls. In fact, Damian has blue balls for most of the book, actually.

Still the erotic tension is delicious, and this is one of the steamier historicals I’ve read lately. Damian has a penchant for talking dirty (in French), and Cynthia is discovering her own sexuality. Here’s an example of the pages steaming up:

She’d often felt invisible, starved for notice and attention. Never had she imagined this delicious scrutiny. “Do many people enjoy being looked at?”

He considered his answer with the same calm deliberation with which he continued to examine her body. “I don’t know if it’s common, but you aren’t alone. Some people have special things that arouse them. Can you guess what mine is?”

Wide-eyed, she shook her head. He came over to her, casually tweaked her hard nipples with his fingertips, and whispered in her ear. Something in French she didn’t understand except for one word.

“I see,” she said. “You like to use the kind of words they don’t use in Birmingham.”

“Dreadfully dull place.”

Hot smexing + heroine owning her shit = WINNING, even if the hero is kind of a douche initially. I was so drawn into Neville’s world that I immediately started reading the Duke of Dark Desires in a massive glom-fest (I’m a lucky duckling, sometimes I get books early). I needed a double-shot to get through work the next morning, but it was so worth it.