Ah, the infamous elephantits cover, from our cover snark on gay romance illustrations. It’s quite difficult not to judge a book by its cover, when the cover is so completely outrageous, AND when the man with the basket-balls appears on BOTH the front AND the back cover. I am usually not at all bothered by the appearance of what I read on the bus, but this could have raised some serious eyebrows with the homeland security folks on the subway. I mean, what IS he hiding in his trousers?

But my quest was not to evaluate the cover – we already did that. My job was to read the content, and really, it’s a shame this book has such a bizarre depiction on the front because as a romance, and as a gay romance, and as a historical, the cover does not exist on the same planet as the quality of the story and of the writing.

Jamie Riley, a young man from York, arrives on the doorstep of the Earl of St. Joseph, ready to assume his post as tutor to the young heirs to the earldom. But he arrives to find a severely attitudinous butler, and beyond him, a single man who says he’s the earl. Jamie had been hired by the current earl’s older brother, who perished with his family in a boat accident. Jamie is heartbroken to learn of the deaths of the family he was eager to work for, and horrified to learn there is no similar post available to him for the current earl, as he has no children to tutor. Jamie, to put it mildly, is flat broke and needed the position to survive.

Stephen St. Clair is the somewhat newly-minted Earl of St. Joseph, and is dealing with his overwhelming feelings of loss by spending whatever of his allowance he can get his hands on, nearly bankrupting his household in the procees. No one in the household has approached the earl about this problem, but they are all aware that they haven’t been paid, and that they probably won’t be come the next pay quarter. Stephen’s friend and valet, an astute man named Charles, figures out quickly from the initial introduction that Jamie is too valuable to be allowed to leave, and presses Stephen to hire him on as a personal secretary under the guise of correcting Stephen’s social calendar.

In his new position, Jamie soon finds that the earl’s library, the household finances, the staff responsibilities and the earl himself are in need of fixing as well. Stephan’s house staff are a collection of misfits, from card-playing valet-cum-friend to the earl, the cook who is far too good looking to be safe from the roaming hands of a master and the jealousy of a mistress in any other household, to the stablemaster who is a tactiturn but brilliant woman, and her gangly 10-year-old son.

In the beginning, this book reads as a clever, well-plotted Regency romance, and if you didn’t know from THE COVER that this was a gay Regency, you’d be waiting for the heroine to show up in her pelisse or riding sidesaddle in a stylish new riding habit with a jaunty feather in her hat. But no, Stephen, he is Teh Gay, and is quite open about it. Almost shockingly so. Everyone in the household is aware that Stephen is gay, as is Charles, and in some cases, Stephen’s homosexuality is what keeps them safe in their current positions. Stephen has no interest in Rebecca, the cook, and if people are going to gossip about him, it won’t be because his stablemaster is a woman. As a result of their safe haven in his home, his servants are delightfully loyal, and one of the most interesting features of this story is the seamlessness between the upstairs and the belowstairs communities, and how they end up blending together as a family of sorts. 

Jamie slowly begins to feel as if he is part of the household of misfits, and finds that he has plenty to keep him busy, particularly if he himself wants to be paid. By far the biggest problem to Stephen’s finances is his contractual relationship with Julian Jeffries, an actor and self-important wastrel who imagines himself the center of the universe. Julian is ever eager to spend as much of the earl’s money as he can, and when he realizes that the earl has noticed and is becoming attracted to his new personal secretary, Julian has to go through great lengths to restore himself as the sun around which the earl and his wallet should orbit. Enter seriously flaming obstacle to the happily ever after to the growing relationship between Stephan and Julian.

What was fascinating about this book was the honesty Pearson used to approach difficult subjects. Pearson does not shy away from or easily dismiss situations that would deeply affect the characters. For example, the death of the earl’s brother, his wife, and two small boys was a source of a great deal of pain for everyone in the household, particularly the earl, and Pearson didn’t allow there to be a happy resolution that easily dismissed the significance of the loss. Instead, Stephen’s grief was used to illustrate the differences between Julian and Jamie and used to make the members of the St. Joseph household real and multi-dimensional characters in their own right.

Further, there are real social consequences for being openly gay in the ton depicted in his novel, and Stephen’s admission of feelings for another man lead to a real and, I am led to believe, historically accurate social penalty. Even though there is a happily ever after, the reader receives that HEA while knowing there will be real difficulties ahead for the protagonists.

What stopped this book from receiving a higher grade was more of what I felt were shortcomings of the character development.

First, much of the story is told from Jamie’s perspective, and the reader knows he is quite innocent, especially in the sense that he’s not had any sexual experience with either gender, despite recognizing his own feelings of attraction for men in his past. He’s lived with his mother, been tutored by a vicar, and emerged an amateur historian of sorts, only to find difficulty making his own way once his mother dies. He makes himself inestimably useful in the St. Joseph estate, creating budgets, streamlining expenses, and assisting the earl in figuring out how to rid himself of Julian’s expensive contract to serve as his escort and lover. But Jamie is completely lost when it comes to dealing with his growing feelings of attraction for the earl, and while Stephen is the more experienced of the two, I would have liked to know more about how Jamie dealt with (a) realizing he was attracted to a man who was attracted to him in return, and (b) the idea of what had been socially and emotionally unattainable suddenly becoming available and possible. I mean, the very idea of being able to live in the same house and openly kiss another man, let alone have that other man explicitly attempt to seduce him, must have rocked Jamie’s little world – I would have liked to have known how he came to terms with this discovery.

Further, social levels being what they were at the time, a relationship between two social strata would have been a challenge for a man and a woman; adding homosexuality to that social inequality still does not change the fact that Jamie is a secretary and Stephen is a titled earl. But what troubled me more than the social inequality was the emotional inequality of the characters. Jamie is relentlessly noble, trying as hard as he can to stay in good spirits and to do the best he can with dogged commitment to being of use and value to the household. Stephen, on the other hand, starts the book as a wastrel, deep in mourning for his brother but unable to deal with the emotional pain of his loss. He attaches himself to showpiece playboys, contractually guaranteeing him sexual services, while neglecting the financial security of the people who depend on him. I wasn’t entirely sure his turnaround in attitude was sufficiently explored for Stephen or for the reader to seem genuine and meaningful.

But the character I had the biggest problem with was Julian: with creative characters all over the place, Julian was a one note, vain, completely conscienceless villain, whose motives aren’t fully explained, and who was at core unsympathetic. The reader understands why he wants to protect his contract with Stephen, but why and how he is willing to go to such depths of behavior to the point of risking lives isn’t explored. The reader is told he is cold, unfeeling, abusive to his servants, and generally a pompous egomaniac, but there isn’t really much development beyond that, leaving Julian a very one-note character. And his comeuppance leaves no satisfaction that he really is paying for his actions – there is a hint that he might, but for his crimes, this reader wanted confirmation of a reservation at the Hotel Asswhuppin’.

Pearson’s strengths, however, are certainly in the prose, the historical settings, and the secondary characters in the story. The writer’s voice is unique, and the story itself is rather groundbreaking – Regency gay romance? Who’d a thunk it? And by virtue of being a gay romance, it forces the reader to reconsider the preconceptions one may have about protagonist relationships, male and female roles, and the like. While at times it seemed the plot veered sharply toward camp, especially the Scooby-gang-like activities of the belowstairs staff, Pearson’s exploration of gay themes was both straightforward and gentle. While the cover may hit you over the head with the fact that This Is a Gay Romance Check Out Those TESTICLES, the writing within repeatedly lulls you into forgetting that there is something dramatically different about this Regency. That in and of itself is quite an accomplishment, because the reader is then able to acknowledge, through experiencing romance in a different manner, that love between two people doesn’t necessarily have rules that rest on gender.