This is my third Judith Ivory, after Beast and Black Silk, and I am well on my way to falling madly in love with this author. I listened to this one on audio (click the link to listen to a sample), and if you are thinking about trying romance on audio, this is the place to start. I usually don’t like male narrators with third person romance (they make women sound shrill), but Steven Crossley did a terrific job, getting perfectly the Cockney-Cornish working class accent and dialect of the hero, and gradually changing them to a gentleman’s tones. Although Ivory’s writing conveyed the different voices, I believe the audio enhanced my experience of the book in this case.
Although the audio version is available, this book is out of print and not available for Kindle. I purchased my paper copy from a USB.
The book opens in a dress shop in Kensington. Mick Tremore, a virile rat catcher with a big bushy mustache who attracts the attentions of gentle ladies looking for a little “mud”, catches sight of a great pair of legs. Eventually, he finds out they belong to Lady Edwina Bollash, a buttoned up blustocking spinster, a linguist and expert in social graces and polite behavior who lives alone and gets by tutoring young ladies. The “proposition” of the title refers to Emile and Jeremy Lamont, brothers who make a bet against one another whether Lady Bollash turn Mick into a gentleman in 6 weeks. One brother thinks being a gentleman is all about behavior and comportment, while the other thinks it’s in the blood. The test will be Mick’s attendance at the annual ball held by Milford Xavier Bollash, 5th Duke of Arles, who happens to be Edwina’s uncle, a man who left her virtually penniless when he inherited her father’s estates. Both Edwina’s pride and the chance to pull one over on her uncle motivate her to accepts the challenge. For his part, Mick is offered 100 pounds, a tidy sum that will help him support his many siblings back in the country.
Mick moves into Edwina’s townhouse for his instruction and that’s where they stay until the last part of the book. This is one of my favorite kinds of romance: low conflict, lots of face time, liberal doses of humor, and the joy of sexual awakening and first love. Mick is a very confident, centered, smart man whose observational skills and pragmatism make him a quick study. He can appreciate the poshness of Edwina’s hospitality without lapsing into self-pity or an out of character rant about class injustice. Mick lives in the moment: he loves life, loves sex, and loves his ferrets and his dogs (I actually thought the bits about rat catching were very interesting, and I have a dread fear of rodents). He has no internal conflict about Edwina. What begins as lust and like (having seen those long gams in the dress shop, he’s not fooled by her plain buttoned up exterior) very naturally becomes true love.
While his exposure to Edwina’s lifestyle motivates a bit of reflection about whether rat catching is the best he can do, and while his clothing, toilette, speech, and mannerisms undergo radical changes, Mick Tremore’s character arc is shorter than Winnie’s. This incorrigible man is perfect for Edwina, and the reader can see this immediately. The real journey has to be taken by the heroine. Edwina is all head, no heart. She’s was dealt major blows as a child, essentially outcast from society when her Uncle abandoned her, and is now emotionally closed off, especially afraid of rejection by men (they’ve never shown an interest in her). Like Mick, though, she’s not “damaged”, and she doesn’t need “saving”. Her pragmatism is less about healthy acceptance, and more about fear of change and fear of failure. Her life is also “pretty good” but it could be so much better if she opened up to Mick and his invitation to seize the day.
If you like sexual tension, this is the book for you. In some ways, the entire book is Mick’s amusing, sincere, and loving attempt to seduce Edwina. But to give one example, Edwina decides early on that Mick’s mustache has to go. In exchange, Mick wants her to lift her skirts to show a bit of leg. The working out of the details of the wager (How much leg? How long? May he touch?) and its execution take a few chapters.
Ivory has a way of taking a thing and making it a kind of motif throughout the book. In Black Silk, it was .. er… black silk. In Beast, it was the ambergris. In this one, it’s Mick’s mustache, a symbol of his virility, his class, his larger than life personality. So much is happening beyond the sexual when he and Winnie battle over that facial hair.
The class distinctions are important to the book, but not a heavy handed imposition. It’s probably fair to say poor country folk are portrayed as being closer to nature and to the body, less worked up about sex. Edwina hides behind her role as Mick’s teacher, which doubles as her role as upper class lady, when she needs to put distance between them, as in this exchange:
He asked bluntly, “Do you want me to kiss you?”
“No” she said instantly. Thought he shock in her face, he would’ve guessed was more for having her mind read than form the idea.
He turned her loose, pushing her away. “fine. If you ever do, just remember I like a little participation. A little share in the responsibility, Miss Bollash. If you want me to kiss you, it’d be right damn nice if you’d say so. Otherwise” — he reverted intentionally — “you ain’t havin’ a kiss from me.”
She glared and pressed her lips so hard together, they turned white. Her face was full of havoc, vexation, bewilderment — for what had just happened.
Then the mean witch of a woman said, “Instead of right — right nice or right fine — you should say quite or rather or even ratherish.”
He gave a snort. He wanted to hoot. “I’m not saying ratherish.”
Then he wanted to laugh outright. Here they were, him and Winnie, going at it again. Jesus, the woman was thick. Didn’t she feel it? Hell he wanted to shove her against a wall between the bridle straps, pull up her skirts — Or no, maybe in the carriage, flat out on the seat or — Jesus, he couldn’t think how to do it or rather, he could think of a hundred ways he wanted to. He wanted to have her, just have her — maybe the floor would do, if the dogs and ferrets didn’t mind.
He made himself ask instead, “What do you want me to say? What was the rest?”
She corrected him again. “Pardon. Remember, you’re supposed to say pardon when you want someone to repeat themselves.”
He raised his brow with theatrical impatience and said, “Pardon, Miss Bollash? What the bloody foke do you want me to day instead of right damn fine?”
She stared fixedly. “Quite fine. Or rather fine.”
“Rather,” he repeated. Rather. Mick could hear himself saying it right. He looked at Winnie. She waited for the whole phrase. Stupid woman. She was happier fixing him than admiring him. It was her way of connecting, her way of shagging him blind. “Rather fine, Miss Bollash.”
Toward the end of the book, Mick gets Edwina out of the house. This is really the climax of the book, literally and literarily. They have a series of adventures beginning in a tea room, moving onto a trolley, and finally a tavern. I think it’s one of the most fun and joyful stretches of romance I have ever read.
The book ends with the ball, of course, and the resolution of the external barrier to their relationship. What I say next contains spoilers.
Longtime romance readers could predict that Mick will not end the book a ratcatcher. It turns out that Jeremy and Emile are conmen who are trying to pass Mick off as the long lost grandson of the Duke, stolen as a baby by his wetnurse and taken to the country. Of course, Mick actually IS the long lost grandson. The Duke of Arles falls ill, he and Edwina make up, at least somewhat, and when he dies, our ratcatcher becomes the wealthiest and most powerful man in England. I had no problem with this — it’s a romance novel after all, and there aren’t many HEAs for poor heroes — but the narrative lost steam for me once Mick and Edwina fell in love and consummated their relationship. So the final bits with the Duke almost read to me like an epilogue: nice, smile-inducing, but not gripping.
In each of he three Ivory books I have read, there is some feature that I found so historically or factually problematic, I had to work hard to not think about it. In this one, it’s the idea that Lady Bollash would have a man stay in her home, especially upstairs on the same floor where she sleeps, when her sterling reputation is what makes her attractive to clients. Also, she attends a ball with three single men. The book is set in Victorian London, not Regency, so perhaps it’s ok? I found it a bit jarring.
Ivory has becomes one of my top five romance writers. I highly recommend this book in print or audio. And if you like Judith Ivory, read or reread Black Silk and join us for a discussion of it Sunday December 6.
