I seem to be sampling Anne Stuart’s books (over 60 of them, beginning in 1994) willy nilly. Back in 2009, I read her romantic suspense, Black Ice (MIRA, 2005) and did an open discussion of it (on which she commented. Squee!). More recently, I read a category, Cinderman (1994 Harlequin American). And now, I’ve read a Stuart historical. I found all of them to be compelling, intelligent and interesting reads. But Ruthless (MIRA, 2010) is a clear favorite.

Ruthless is Book 1 in the House of Rohan Trilogy. Books two (Breathless) and three (Reckless) have since been published. In an unsavory neighborhood in pre Revolutionary Paris, Elinor Harriman, tall, sensible, strong, and large nosed English miss, lives in near poverty with her beautiful half sister Lydia and her mother, Lady Caroline, whose advanced case of syphilis is a sorry prize for a selfish lifestyle of lover after lover, gambling and spending beyond her means.

When Lady Caroline runs off with the last of the family’s tiny bit of money, Elinor’s search — in a stolen carriage –  takes her to the chateau of Viscount Francis Rohan, le Comte de Giverney, on the outskirts of Paris. Rohan is hosting a, erm, meeting of his club, the Heavenly Host, a “covert gathering of wicked aristocrats with too much time on their hands” whose motto is “Do what thou wilt”.  As Rohan, an exile of twenty-two years from England, looks on, from his dais (!), women and men engage in orgies, devil worship, gambling, and a multitude of other sins.

Alas, Rohan is bored. So when Elinor storms in, demanding her mother back, he is “reluctantly fascinated.” Rohan “usually found innocence to be tedious, [but] Mademoiselle Elinor Harriman’s innocence was oddly appealing.” For her part, Elinor finds Rohan attractive, but quickly squashes her feelings under her moral outrage at his attitude (he has a tendency to refer to her mother as a “poxy whore”), behavior (he’s the “fiend of duplicity”) and general existence (a “heartless, soulless libertine”). Plus, she blames her mother’s insatiable lust for her family’s current straits, and feels “unclean” just being in the chateau.

This is a familiar conflict for romance readers, and it’s one I enjoy reading. I was very interested in the story, in Rohan’s attraction and growing concern for Elinor, and in Elinor’s yielding to him, and found it hard to put down. Depths to Rohan are hinted by the loyalty shown him by his servants, and his best friend, Charles Reading (whose secondary romance with Lydia Harriman is quite touching). As one motherly servant explains, “He’s a very bad boy, he is. But he has a reason.” That reason turned out to be a bit underdeveloped, and thus less interesting or explanatory than his just being a rotten jerk would be, but whatever.

Rohan decides he wants Elinor, and his own inability to examine his motives prevents the reader from asking too many questions:

I have no idea why I am so intent on debauching a young woman who will give me nothing but trouble. But then, I’ve never spent overmuch time examining my motives. I want her.

That’s ok. Readers know that Elinor is exactly what he needs to move from a state of permanent ennui to a fully engaged and happy human life. She won’t put up with his highhandedness, accuses the self-styled “lord of the underworld” of being a spoiled brat, and generally brings out the best in him.

But why should Elinor want Rohan? Well, for six years she has been “calm, practical, thoughtful.” She has taken care of her mother, her sister, and their servants without a thought to her own needs or pleasure. Rohan brings out the reckless part of her she has hidden. In the carriage on the way back to Paris, Rohan teaches Elinor what a lesbian is using the improbable method of bringing her to her first orgasm via external genital rubbing. When Rohan sees the state of the Harriman apartments, he sends furniture, food, and firewood, and although Elinor tries to refuse it, deep down she’s relieved to have someone share some of the burden. Preventing her from succumbing completely to Rohan’s charms, however, is the memory of her mother’s ruinous dependence “on the largesse of a man with wicked plans. She was not going to follow in her mother’s footsteps, she was not.”

I enjoyed the heck out of this book, but there was some things that kept it from being a truly phenomenal read. For one thing, Elinor’s character. I know others have complained about Rohan being a “wallpaper rake”, and I do understand that. Rohan’s badness seems confined to pushing the sexual envelope (but not, of course, with our heroine. You know what they say. It’s not love unless it’s missionary.). But I read him, with his yards of lace, his high heeled silk shoes, his long flowing hair, his mincing walk, his dais, and his tendency to talk or think constantly about his own badness (“I have evil plans to hatch”, ” “He was not a good man.”, “He needed to remind himself who and what he was. The Prince of Darkness, the King of Hell. A thoroughly bad man.”) as kind of ridiculous. Sexy ridiculous, but still.

What bothered me more was Elinor’s wallpaper fiestiness. I don’t think I can count how many times this heroine’s actions were determined by a false choice put to her by someone else with power over her, as in this passage:

You’ve been given a chance to save your family, to protect your younger sister to aid your mother in a time of great need. You can do the selfish thing, and refuse, or you can accept, gracefully. It’s your choice.

Or…

She didn’t bother to argue. He had the upper hand, which was both unsettling and infuriating.

Or…

Her choices were not many, and they were all unappealing.

She’s often infuriated, but does, or can do, little to change her situation. For example, she pulls a gun on Rohan, twice, and you know how he disarms her? By asking her for the weapon. There was one moment when Elinor took absolute control, but it was in bed, and so left field for her inexperienced and lust-averse character, that it didn’t completely satisfy my hope for her agency.*

(*As an aside, after consummation Rohan tells Elinor that while he is ready for another immediate go, she must rest. Only in romance would a 39 year old man recover from sex faster than a 23 year old woman!)

There were also some things that felt rushed, or undeveloped. For example, Rohan and Elinor never discussed his past, or the shadow it casts on his present. And Rohan gains important information about Elinor’s late father’s estate and his heir, but doesn’t tell Elinor. At the very end, Elinor has an abrupt realization which the narrative doesn’t have space to explore … so why put it in there?

Still, I liked this one a lot — great sexual tension, interesting setting and characters, especially Rohan, snappy dialogue, sweet secondary romance — and recommend it if you aren’t tired of the rake and the virtuous-miss-clinging-to-her-dignity storyline.