The Official Essex Sisters Companion Guide by Jody Gayle with Eloisa James Read Free Book Online Page B

1603.
    In a final example, from the first book in the series, a reader named Katheryn wrote to point out that although Much Ado About You is set in 1816, Hans Christian Andersen didn’t write The Princess and the Pea until 1835. Therefore, Rafe could not possibly have had a mural of the story painted on the nursery walls in Holbrook Court. Later on I merrily played with historical fact while writing my own version of that particular fairy story, The Duke Is Mine .
    Along with factual errors, readers also write about errors to do with Regency etiquette and culture. In fact, I would credit a good deal of the working knowledge I have of the period to interested, engaged readers. Dawa, for example, wrote to point out that when Imogen and Rafe are at Cristobel’s performance, the innkeeper tells a patron to put his sword away. As Dawa noted, swords were not common Regency accoutrements.
    The letters I’ve outlined so far are normal fare for a writer of period fiction, no matter how hard Franzeca tries to steer me away from mistakes. But when it came to The Taming of the Duke , the amount of puzzled fan mail turned from a trickle to a waterfall.
    It’s an author’s worst nightmare, frankly. It turned out that some readers could not figure out when (and whether) Imogen knew that Rafe was pretending to be his brother while they were together. They didn’t know whether Imogen was aware that Rafe was Rafe when they were making love—or whether she thought she was making love to Gabe. And they really didn’t like the idea that she thought she made love to Gabe, only to marry his brother.
    I ended up writing both a thorough explanation, and an extra chapter, a behind-the-scenes peek at a sweet conversation between Rafe and Imogen on that very subject. I’m including both. First up is my explanation of when Imogen knew that “Gabe” was actually Rafe.
    About Men in Costume (originally posted on Eloisa’s website)
    There’s a kind of literary criticism that argues that we shouldn’t even bother talking about an author’s “intention” because every reader essentially re-writes a book as she reads it, and I guess I’m more of that frame of mind than I would have thought.
    Still . . . here I go, wading in where angels fear to tread. BEWARE! If you are nurturing your own sweet progression for Rafe and Imogen, please don’t read this. Why would you want to know what I think about it? That doesn’t mean the relationship developed precisely as I say. I often feel as if I’m watching a movie while I’m writing, and Lord knows, I’m a terrible film critic!
    OK, with that slightly crack-brained proviso, I’m going to leap in. The big question is, when did Imogen realize that Rafe was hiding behind a mustache and pretending that he was Gabe? I’ll explicate some structural bits of the book, dividing the crucial chapters into separate discussions.
    One thing I want to note up front is that Rafe and Imogen’s relationship continued to develop on the side, in a very deep way, at the very same time that she was engaging in her excursions with “Gabe.”
    Obviously, Imogen has no idea of Rafe’s masquerade in the beginning. The deliciousness of writing the first scene with Rafe in a mustache, for me, was staying inRafe’s point of view a lot of the time as he kept telling himself that of course, Imogen didn’t really want to sleep with a man—and then discovering that in fact, she did . The whole first carriage ride—the first half of Chapter 19 —was leading to this sentence: “Rafe knew deep in his bones that he would do whatever it took to keep her from knowing that Gabe was indeed in the ranks of Draven and Mayne: men who were inexplicably blind to her charms and couldn’t tell a diamond from a river rock.”
    Now, Imogen’s realization of the truth is very slow, and very sweet. But you have to remember that she knows Rafe. And she already loves him, though she wouldn’t think so consciously. Why do you think she