My Darling Duke

by Stacy Reid

While reading My Darling Duke, I realized that as much as I rail against the popularity of magic peen as a plot device, magic cooch is not an improvement. Kitty Danvers and her group of wallflowery friends are veterans of multiple unsuccessful marriage market seasons in London. Kitty is a world-weary twenty-three, and with her hopes for a husband and children fading, she and her friends decide to be “sinful.” For Kitty, that means claiming to be engaged to a famously reclusive Duke in order to improve the prospects of her younger sisters. I didn’t find this particularly wicked, but I have high hopes for later books in the series, since one of the other wallflowers is considering a career as a courtesan, and another befriended a princess.

When the Duke, Alexander, reads about his supposed engagement in the paper, he’s more intrigued than angry. He decamps from his secret Scottish castle and shows up in London, surprising everyone, especially Kitty. Alexander has no interest in getting married, but he’s happy to play along with Kitty’s deception because of loneliness, and mutual attraction. He also has secrets of his own. His absence from society followed a fire that left him with dramatic facial scars, chronic pain, difficulty walking, and impotence. The first person to arouse him in ten years is Kitty.

I loved that despite Kitty’s discomfort about lying, she went all in on her role as a future duchess. She spends her family’s yearly income on ballgowns to look the part, gives interviews claiming the Duke writes her love poetry, and convinces Alexander’s lawyers to rent her a townhouse with his money. After she and Alexander meet and become co-conspirators, there’s a strange but delightful Beauty and the Beast-inspired interlude where Alexander forces her to spend a few weeks in his castle, and the servants try their best to play matchmaker. Despite being a near hermit, Alexander has an extensive collection of Phantom of the Opera-esque masks in a variety of fashionable prints, and wears them in London. This amused me.

Yet it wasn’t clear what Kitty and Alexander have in common, and I had trouble believing a marriage between the two of them would work. Alexander is passionate about political reform; Kitty has no interest in politics, and deflects any attempts to engage her in political conversation. Kitty has always wanted to travel, while Alexander seems more of an armchair traveler who loves reading about faraway places. What they both have in common is a focus on childbearing. Kitty wants kids, and Alexander thinks he’s unmarriageable if he can’t give a woman babies.

Which leads me to my main problem with My Darling Duke—how Alexander’s impotence is handled. Alexander’s inability to maintain an erection is the major obstacle in his relationship with Kitty, because he “can’t give her children,” and worries about not sexually satisfying her. This could have been an opportunity for sex scenes that normalized non-penetrative sex, especially since Kitty is a clueless virgin with only a vague sense of the male anatomy.

Instead, the vicissitudes of Alexander’s slowly reawakening cock overshadow the emotional arc of Kitty and Alexander’s love story. When they finally have sex, the clitoral orgasms he initially gives Kitty are depicted as insufficiently pleasurable when compared to the penisy pleasure she later receives, once sex with her fully heals his impotence. I appreciated that the couple learned to adapt their sex life to Alexander’s disability; it’s rare to read about characters trying out different positions until they find what works. But even through the epilogue, Alexander remains focused on attaining his idea of sexual success, the [boring] missionary position. Whatever, dude.

I love a brazen fake relationship trope, and have to give props to a Regency where a doctor prescribes masturbation to the hero as a treatment for inflammation. (It fails because only Kitty IRL will do). But My Darling Duke missed the chance to tell a nuanced story of a (sex) life with chronic pain, while also underscoring a very narrow, heteronormative definition of sexual satisfaction. If you like reading about characters with a disability, I suggest looking elsewhere.

– Shana

Miss Katherine Danvers has always been a wallflower. But now, with her family on the brink of financial ruin, she finds herself a desperate wallflower. To save her family, she’ll do anything. Luckily, she has the perfect plan…

She’ll impress the ton by simply announcing she is engaged to the reclusive and mysterious Duke of Thornton, Alexander Masters, and secure strong matches for her sisters. No one has heard from the duke in years. Surely he’ll never find out before her sisters’ weddings, and she can go back to her own quiet life.

Soon, though, everything is out of control. At first, it’s just a few new ball gowns on the duke’s accounts. Then, it’s interviews with reporters eager for gossip. Before she knows it, Katherine has transformed herself into Kitty Danvers, charming and clever belle of the ton—with everyone eager to meet her thankfully absent fiancé.

But when the enigmatic Alexander Masters suddenly arrives in the city, dashing and oh so angry, he demands retribution. Except not in the way Katherine expected…

Historical: European, Romance