Book Review: How to Master Your Marquis
/How to Master Your Marquis
His eyes were small and dark and permanently narrowed, like a pair of suspicious currants. His forehead was broad and steep above a hedgerow brow. His pitted skin spoke of the slings and arrows of a life spent braced between the dregs of humanity and the righteous British public, and his mouth, even when proffering an introductory smile, turned downward at the ends toward some magnetic core of dole within him.
But her masquerade is rendered both more interesting and more challenging by the frequent presence of Sir John's friend Lord Hatherfield at the breakfast table in Cadogan Square. She's enraptured by him right from the start, and although he instantly sees through her disguise (the wonder is that nobody else does - Gray's author photo reveals her to be a beautiful young woman, and from this novel it's painfully obvious she's never tried even for five minutes to pass herself off in front of strangers as a nondescript young man; it takes a lot more than a fake mustache, and since so much of her novel hinges on this disguise, it might have behooved her to make it a bit more believable), she's forced to assume an innocent, slightly affronted air at his numerous insinuations:
Stefanie was rather good at innocent airs, or so she flattered herself. God knew she'd had ages of practice. When the Archduke of Schleissen-Pleissen stormed downstairs to breakfast complaining publicly of a bed short-sheeted the night before, an innocent air might prove the only thing standing between a certain mischievous young princess and a week spent with the solid weight of a Gutenberg Bible balanced atop her head.
She's forced to do this at first, anyway - in short order she shares her secret with Hatherfield and would like to share a lot more than that (Stefanie's unapologetic randiness is the only glaring anachronism in this otherwise fairly well-researched novel), except she finds him curiously stand-offish even as they grow to become friends:
He avoided every possible point of physical contact with her entirely, to be perfectly honest. But he was there, every day, in the breakfast room in Cadogan Square. He waited outside Sir John's chambers as noon chimed the nearby tower of St. Martin-in-the-Fields, ate lunch with her at a tavern or tea shop - never the same establishment two days running - and returned her safely to her place of employment, except on the days she accompanied Sir John to court. Everywhere she went, he followed her like a faithful old hound, safeguarding her against every possible threat, casting a suspicious eye at every shadow in her path. At mealtimes they talked and talked, about the law and her work with Sir John, about European politics and palace intrigue, about Stefanie's childhood in Holstein Castle, about books and science and gossip. On weekends they rode in the park or went on outings to Hampton Court and Windsor and Hampstead Heath. He showed her Eton, where he went to school, and pointed out the playing field where he'd had a tooth knocked out playing rugby. He'd showed her the replacement and tapped it importantly. "Not a bad facsimile, is it?" he'd said, and when she said she might have to make a closer examination, he'd laughed and pulled away.
The novel's parallel opening structure - shuttling back and forth between Stefanie's initial adventures in law-clerking and Hatherfield's murder trial - is so well-handled that Gray only needs about fifteen pages to hook her readers, and she keeps them hooked mainly on the allure of Stefanie herself, a delightfully willful fish-out-of-water character to whom Gray gives some memorably funny scenes and lines. And the novel's historical backdrop is interesting too: the year is 1890, the Regency period is long over, and London's stately homes are beginning to have electric lights and even telephones. It's still a comparatively unexplored period for paperback romances, and Gray provides a good taste of it for her audience.And by the time that audience reaches the end of How to Master Your Marquis, they'll be very happy that there's one more princess sister to go. How to School Your Scoundrel comes out in June.