Title: Born To Be Wilde
Series: (The Wildes Of Lindow Castle #3)
Author: Eloisa James
Expected Date Of Publication: July 31, 2018
Publisher: Avon
Rating: 4 Stars
The richest bachelor in England plays matchmaker…for an heiress he wants for himself!
For beautiful, witty Lavinia Gray, there's only one thing worse than having to ask the appalling Parth Sterling to marry her: being turned down by him.
Now the richest bachelor in England, Parth is not about to marry a woman as reckless and fashion-obsessed as Lavinia; he's chosen a far more suitable bride.
But when he learns of Lavinia's desperate circumstances, he offers to find her a husband. Even better, he'll find her a prince.
As usual, there's no problem Parth can't fix. But the more time he spends with the beguiling Lavinia, the more he finds himself wondering…
Why does the woman who's completely wrong feel so right in his arms?
Excerpt from Born to be Wilde, by Eloisa James
Chapter One
Lindow Castle, Cheshire
Country seat of the Duke of Lindow
June 4, 1780
Miss Lavinia Gray considered herself reasonably brave. In her twenty-one years, she had been presented to both an English and a French queen without losing her composure. She had squeaked, but not screamed, after a close encounter with an exceedingly large bear. Perhaps “bear” was an exaggeration. One could call it a dog, but only if a dog had huge bear-like fangs and lunged from the shadows.
Screaming would not have been uncalled for.
There was also the time she had waded into a lake rumored to be inhabited by leeches. She had shuddered but soldiered on every time something soft bumped her legs.
But this?
Hovering in the corridor outside a gentleman’s bedchamber?
This was a whole new level of uneasiness. She’d prefer to swim in a leechy lake up to her neck than knock on the door before her.
The ironic thing was that she’d soothed many a young gentleman who had fallen to his knees to offer marriage, although now she realized she should have been even kinder. Drumming up one’s nerves to propose was terrifying.
That’s what she was about to do.
Propose.
A silent shriek went through her head. How in heaven’s name had she come to this?
She shook off the unhelpful thought and tried to muster her courage. Generally speaking, she found dresses to be a formidable suit of armor, useful in marshalling courage, but even one of her best Parisian gowns wasn’t helping. Champagne-tinted silk clung to her figure and then opened into frothy ruffles at the hem; modest padding at the hips emphasized the swell of her breasts and made her waist look smaller.
Ordinarily, she would have felt invulnerable in it, but at the moment, she felt only self-conscious dread.
The problem was that Parth Sterling had never shown any sign of being attracted to her figure—or any other part of her, for that matter. Just last night he had entered the drawing room, nodded to her, and promptly moved to the other side of the room.
After not seeing her for two years.
Bring on the leechy lake.
“You have no choice,” her cousin Diana had fiercely insisted, not ten minutes ago. “You must marry Parth.”
Lavinia took a deep breath, forcing herself to stand still and not dash down the corridor. Hands clenched at her sides, she firmed her lips and took a step closer to the door.
She needed Parth, not only because he was the richest bachelor in the kingdom, but because he—well, he got things done.
He fixed things.
Problems of all sorts.
The thought stiffened her backbone, and before she could stop herself again, she knocked. And waited.
A swooning sense of relief came over her when no one opened the door.
She would return to Diana and report that Parth Sterling unaccountably hadn’t been in his chamber waiting for a marriage proposal.
He was—
He was standing in the open doorway, staring at her there in the dark corridor.
“Lavinia?”
She managed a wavering smile. “Hello!”
“Jesus,” he barked, and then looked both ways. “What in the hell are you doing out here?”
Before she could answer, he grabbed her by the elbow, pulled her inside, and slammed the door.
Earlier, talking to Diana, it had all made sense, in a cracked sort of way: Parth was unmarried, and Parth was a problem-solver.
But faced with Parth? Who was taller than most men, broader in his chest, with thick hair, skin like honey, dark eyes…
He looked like a pirate. Diana’s words. She herself would have said a king. A pirate king.
“I find myself in a predicament,” Lavinia said, the words tripping over each other. “Well, more than a predicament, a problem. Yes, problem is the right word for it.” Usually she had no trouble speaking, but now it felt as if sentences were knocking about in her head.
“It must be an appalling sort of problem, to bring you to my door.” His voice wasn’t chilly, precisely, but she caught a distinct ironic edge.
Oh God, her sins were coming home to roost.
“I used to call you Appalling Parth,” she said, clearing her throat. “It was merely in jest, and I apologize.”
“To be sure, a jest,” he agreed, his voice indifferent. “Whatever the case, why are you here, Miss Sterling?”
“You used to call me Lavinia. In fact, you did seconds ago.”
“Seconds ago I was shocked to find a lady standing at my bedchamber door. It seems we were both guilty of a lapse in decorum.”
Well, that was blunt. Lavinia twisted her fingers together, trying to work out how to broach the subject of marriage. This was a disaster. She ought to leave. She told herself to leave, quite firmly. Her feet remained rooted to the carpet.
Parth raised a brow. “Well?” he said, when she had apparently stood in silence too long. “What can I do for you, Miss Sterling?”
Before she thought twice, her eyes flew to his. Yes, she had teased him. But she didn’t believe he hated her.
“Lavinia,” he corrected, his eyes softening. “That was graceless of me, because you are clearly in extremis. What can I do to help?”
The humiliating thing was that the mere sight of him made her heart pound. Never mind that he was monstrously arrogant and would make a terrible husband. From the moment she’d first seen him, two summers before, he’d done something to her. He aggravated her. He infuriated her. He intrigued her. She hated that the most because he had made it clear from the first time he saw her that he considered her trivial, silly, and intellectually inferior.
Why in God’s name had she allowed Diana to talk her into this?
She cleared her throat. “I was wondering if you had made any plans for marriage.”
He froze.
“Because,” Lavinia said, propelled forward by the horrible narrative that she and Diana had devised. “I am…I am…”
She couldn’t do it.
She tried again. “It’s just that I thought—”
“Are you offering to marry me?” His voice rasped. “Bloody hell, Lavinia—are you proposing marriage?”
“Something like that,” she admitted.
She had imagined surprise, or blunt rejection. She had not imagined…pity.
But she saw pity in his dark eyes, and a wave of humiliation made her stomach cramp. Instinctively she swung her gaze away and caught sight of the two of them in a looking glass hanging on the wall.
Lavinia looked the same as she had two hours ago. Her thick hair was the color of new guineas; her blue eyes were framed by lavish eyelashes that she darkened religiously. A buxom figure and lips that she didn’t bother to color because her looks already skirted the edge of respectability.
That showed just how deceiving an appearance could be.
She was no longer the Lavinia of two hours ago. For one thing, she was no longer respectable. A hysterical giggle rose in her chest at the thought. Miss Lavinia Gray, daughter of Lady Gray, who had been wooed on both side of the Channel, was no longer—
Respectable.
Her eyes moved to Parth again and it struck her that he wasn’t wearing a coat, just a white linen shirt. In fact, he’d rolled up his sleeves, revealing powerful arms. No wig, no coat. She looked down. No boots.
“We aren’t from the same world,” he said, catching her thought but not understanding it. “You don’t want to marry me, Lavinia. I can’t imagine why you got that in your head.”
Out of nowhere, a streak of blind stubbornness appeared. “Would you…may I know your reasons for refusing me?”
He looked at her, incredulous. “Lavinia, are you feeling well?”
“Not particularly,” she said in a burst of honesty. “Perhaps because I’ve never done anything like this before.” She was confident around the men who’d courted her; their attentions confirmed her desirability. But something about Parth made her feel uncertain and defensive. At the same time, everything in her prickled into life.
“I gather you are saying no,” she added.
“I am indeed saying no,” Parth replied. His tone wasn’t unkind, but it was unambiguous. He moved to stand behind a chair, as if to put an obstacle between them, as if she were a feral dog who might lunge at him.
This wasn’t the way this was supposed to go.
Diana had been confident that Parth would agree, and she had talked at length about how he would fall in love with Lavinia after they had wed. With a sickening jolt, Lavinia realized that she had gone along with the plan because it involved Parth.
Who was precisely the sort of man who would never accept a bride he hadn’t chosen himself.
She was such a fool.
“Lavinia, is there anything I can—”
“No, nothing at all,” she said brightly, turning toward the door. “I can’t imagine why I ever had such an idiotic notion.”
He stepped in front of her. “Why did you?”
“I have had a lingering infatuation,” she said, the words pouring out before she caught them. “You don’t believe I give every man pet names, do you?”
“What?”
She saw the muscles tense through the sheer linen of his shirt. It was…
“I’m joking!” she cried. “It’s time I return to my own chamber. You certainly don’t want me to be caught here. I can assure you, Parth, that I may ask a gentleman to marry me, but I would never compromise one.”
His hand whipped out and caught her arm. “I’m not the first you’ve proposed to?” It was a growl.
“As a matter of fact, you are.” Then she added, with reckless bravado, “But now I’ve broken the ice, so to speak, who knows where I’ll stop?”
Parth shook his head. “When you left England, you were the most desirable lady on the marriage market. You have no need to woo a man, Lavinia.”
“Times change,” she said lightly.
His gaze moved from her toes to her head. “No, they don’t. You look—” Then his eyes sharpened. “Wait. I see.”
“You do?” She pulled her arm free and began to back toward the door. Why had she listened to Diana? Everyone knew that her cousin was prone to wild ideas. Just look at the way Diana had run away from her own betrothal party with no more than a hatbox, and after that, had become a governess in the home of her jilted fiancé.
He took a step toward her, eyes intent. “It’s not a disgrace, Lavinia.”
“You know?” There was gravel in her voice.
“I can guess.”
“Oh.” The word was small and ashamed.
“I’ll find him,” Parth said, low and ferocious. “And I’ll kill him.”
“What?”
“The father of your child.” Parth’s large hands closed around her shoulders. “Tell me his name.” His eyes fell to her bosom, assessed the size of her breasts, descended to her hips. “Three or four months on the way, I would guess?”
Lavinia’s mouth fell open, and then she snapped it shut. She’d been humiliated before, but now… “You believe I’d deceive you so?” The words came out broken and aching. “I know you don’t like me, Parth, but you think me capable of that? That I’d—that I’d ask you to marry me in order to disguise the fact I was carrying another man’s child?”
His eyes went blank and his hands fell away.
“You feel that I’m—that I had—that I would—” Her throat ached so much she couldn’t speak. She had known he disliked her. But she hadn’t imagined he thought she was loose. Or worse, conniving.
That was the moment when, looking back, Lavinia decided that she could consider herself brave. Because she didn’t cry or scream. She summoned the last dregs of her courage and drew herself upright.
She might have even given him a polite smile. “I apologize, Parth. Excuse me, I meant to say, Mr. Sterling. I intruded into your chamber and embarrassed both of us, for no good reason.”
She skirted him and fled, somehow finding the discipline to close the door quietly behind herself.
My Thoughts
Parth Sterling is a Wilde in every way that counts.
But his place as an adopted son of the most influential family in all of English aristocracy, can never overshadow the fact that in thought, action, and business, Parth Sterling is a self made man.
For Lavinia Gray self-made may not be an option. But given the dire state of her family fortune, due to the hidden demons of thievery and addiction that plague her mother. Lavina is a woman well aware that both her's and her mother's fortunes rest solely on her ability to make a match for herself.
Quickly!
The problem...
The one man to which Lavinia can even imagine herself connected in any way, has no intention of connecting himself to her.
Choosing instead to align himself with an Italian Countessa.
But the more that Parth seeks to put distance between himself and the beleaguered Miss Gray. The more that fate and an undeniable attraction between the two seem to ensure that they are thrown together at every possible opportunity. With more than a little help from those lovable albeit meddlesome Wildes, of course.
Both Lavinia and Parth are characters for whom the Wilde circle is an indirect circumstance.
Parth...
Because he was adopted by the family after the loss of his own.
Lavinia...
Through the betrothal of her mother's ward Diana, to one Lord Roland Northbridge Wilde.
Connections that one could only have made however, if one has had the pleasure of reading both Wilde In Love and Too Wilde To Wed. (Books 1 and 2 in the Wildes Of Lindow Castle series.)
Writing this review as someone with both feet and opinion thoroughly shaped by having read both prior books.
As readers, as well as everyone in the book, come into things knowing full well that there can be none for Parth or Lavinia but the other.
(Insert heartfelt sigh and dramatic eye roll here.)
Not to worry though...
The story can and does carry on, moot point and all. As only an Eloisa James romance can.
Splendidly!
Although Lavinia's occupation as Diana's stylist seems to do more at times to make this a continuation of North a Diana's story than anything else.
Rounding things out for the better.
Miss James' exploration of addiction, recovery, and relapse as afforded by Mrs. Gray's portion of the story.
This is the stuff of extremely compelling reading.
An element that makes all of the sojourns into "why exactly am I here again" worth all the effort.
Reviewer's Note: Born To Be Wilde is the third book in an interrelated companion series, and may be read as part of that series, or as a standalone.
About Eloisa
New York Times
bestselling author Eloisa James writes historical romances for
HarperCollins Publishers. Her novels have been published to great
acclaim. A reviewer from USA Today wrote of Eloisa's very first book that she "found herself devouring the book like a dieter with a Hershey bar"; later People Magazine raved that "romance writing does not get much better than this." Her novels have repeatedly received starred reviews from Publishers' Weekly and Library Journal and regularly appear on the best-seller lists.After graduating from Harvard University, Eloisa got an M.Phil. from Oxford University, a Ph.D. from Yale and eventually became a Shakespeare professor, publishing an academic book with Oxford University Press. Currently she is an associate professor and head of the Creative Writing program at Fordham University in New York City. Her "double life" is a source of fascination to the media and her readers. In her professorial guise, she's written a New York Times op-ed defending romance, as well as articles published everywhere from women's magazines such as More to writers' journals such as the Romance Writers' Report.
Eloisa...on her double life:
When I'm not writing novels, I'm a Shakespeare professor. It's rather like having two lives. The other day I bought a delicious pink suit to tape a television segment on romance; I'll never wear that suit to teach in, nor even to give a paper at the Shakespeare Association of America conference. It's like being Superman, with power suits for both lives. Yet the literature professor in me certainly plays into my romances. The Taming of the Duke (April 2006) has obvious Shakespearean resonances, as do many of my novels. I often weave early modern poetry into my work; the same novel might contain bits of Catullus, Shakespeare and anonymous bawdy ballads from the 16th century.
When I rip off my power suit, whether it's academic or romantic, underneath is the rather tired, chocolate-stained sweatshirt of a mom. Just as I use Shakespeare in my romances, I almost always employ my experiences as a mother. When I wrote about a miscarriage in Midnight Pleasures, I used my own fears of premature birth; when the little girl in Fool For Love threw up and threw up, I described my own daughter, who had that unsavory habit for well over her first year of life.
So I'm a writer, a professor, a mother - and a wife. My husband Alessandro is Italian, born in Florence. We spend the lazy summer months with his mother and sister in Italy. It always strikes me as a huge irony that as a romance writer I find myself married to a knight, a cavaliere, as you say in Italian.
One more thing...I'm a friend. I have girlfriends who are writers and girlfriends who are Shakespeare professors. And I have girlfriends who are romance readers. In fact, we have something of a community going on my website. Please stop by and join the conversation on my readers' pages.
Find: Her
Website - http://www.eloisajames.com/
Twitter – https://twitter.com/eloisajames
Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/eloisajames
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