Portia Da Costa
In the Flesh
HQN/Mar. 20, 2012/ $7.99 print, $6.39 digital
Society already believes she’s a scarlet woman. Why not become one?
Posing nude to appease her now ex-fiancé perhaps wasn’t the most prudent idea Beatrice Weatherly has ever had. With the photographs scrutinized up and down the ton and her brother running them into debt, Beatrice’s hopes of making a respectable marriage are dashed.
After one glance at Beatrice’s infamous racy cabinet cards, wealthy, powerful Edward Ellsworth Richie is soon obsessed with Beatrice’s voluptuous figure. His indecent proposal—one month of hedonistic servitude in exchange for enough money to pay her brother’s debts—is one she can hardly refuse.
Portia Da Costa’s In the Flesh is an erotic romance set in 1890s London. The story itself is fairly simple: an arrangement of lust and convenience grows into romance; but, as in all stories, the fun is in how the story is told, and the characters. This novel is all about the characters.
The thing I love most about Da Costa’s work is that it tends to a realistic optimism. Her characters have problems and tensions, and they hurt other people with their actions, but they’re, overall, good people. That’s a harder trick to accomplish than you’d think. It’s much, much easier to have plot tension arise from the actions of an unmitigated villain. Da Costa doesn’t take that easy path, instead giving her characters depth and conflicting motives and impulses, so even her main villain is a sympathetic character. Every character is In the Flesh feels like an ordinary person rather than a caricature; an ordinary person you can care about.
Her hero and heroine are, however, more than ordinary; they’re protagonists of a steamy romance, after all. Beatrice’s point of view in particular is fascinating. She’s a practical sort of person, who is fascinated by typewriting machines and their potential for income, presaging the women who will work in factories twenty years down the line.
“I think the sooner you relinquish thoughts of me making a good marriage to mend our fortunes the better. Maybe you should think about getting a job? I’ll work, too. I’m a quick learner and there are plenty of things I could do.”
Shortly after that conversation with her brother, she’s completely swept away by her erotic fascination for Edward Ritchie. One day, she’s moving through her life, socially ruined and contemplating learning to type; the next, she sees the man of her hidden dreams.
… the elegant cut of his suit couldn’t entirely mask the rangy power of his body, making the job of her imagination dangerously easy. Her oppressor gave her a smile. A dazzling, daring smile, so much more arresting than a mortal man’s should be. A smile that had her gulping her champagne as if it were lemonade, regardless of her resolve to be cautious. His lips were sultry. In a clean-shaven face that was neither young nor older, but somehow strangely both; they were strong and firmly outlined, hinting at voracious appetites never denied. Beatrice imagined him savoring rich food and fine wine, but always in moderation, appreciating every pleasure without going to excess. Lips like that would kiss a woman just as hungrily and with equal calculation. Lips like that would kiss a woman until she gasped. Lips like that would kiss a woman into doing anything.
… Deep in her body, some demon imp of sweet licentiousness was capering, roused to madness by the delicate touch of Ritchie’s hand on her gloved elbow.
As for Mr. Ritchie, he could easily seem a villain in the hands of another writer because he’s willing to pay money to Beatrice and her brother both, for her to become his mistress. But his motives are much more complex than they seem at first. He sees Beatrice more clearly than she sees herself. He wants her for her own sake as well as his.
… with Beatrice Weatherly, every attraction came from the woman herself. Her dark green eyes, her fierce Amazonian expression, the way her head came up and she gasped as he challenged her.
… He had power, resources, money in colossal amounts, and he’d use whatever tactics he had to in order to get her. At the back of his mind, guilt—and a distaste for his own self-serving motives—pricked him, but the jabs were faint and fast fading against the hard ache in his loins and the strangely indefinable longing that racked his chest.
I want to know more. How about you?
Victoria Janssen is the author of three novels and numerous short stories. Her latest novel is The Duke and The Pirate Queen; she has a World War One-set Spice Brief out in May titled “Under Her Uniform.” Follow her on Twitter: @victoriajanssen or find out more at victoriajanssen.com.
