Potent Pleasure

Zusatztext "James weaves a web of scandals and surprises! forcing the reader into a delicious surrender." -- USA Today "Unexpected twists...surprises all around." -- Publishers Weekly "A fine debut...brings to mind the best of Amanda Quick and Judith McNaught." -- Booklist Informationen zum Autor Eloisa James is a professor of English literature who lives with her family in New Jersey. Potent Pleasures is her first novel. Her second novel, Midnight Pleasures , will be available from Delacorte Press in August 2000. Klappentext Nothing is more seductive than temptation. Reckless desire sends Charlotte Daicheston into the garden with a dashing masked stranger. He's powerful, unforgettable, a devastatingly handsome footman who lures her--not against her will--into a grand indiscretion at a masquerade ball. Then he vanishes. Several years later, after Charlotte has made her dazzling debut in London society, they meet again. But the rogue is no footman. He's rich, titled, and he doesn't remember Charlotte. Worse, he's the subject of some scandalous gossip: rumor has it, the earl's virility is in question. Charlotte, who knows all too intimately the power of his passion, is stunned by the gossip that has set society ablaze. At last, there can be a storybook ending...unless, of course, Charlotte's one mad indiscretion had not been with him at all.... Leseprobe Kent, England March 1798 Charlotte was one week short of seventeen when her life  changed, falling into two halves like a shiny child's ball:   before and after. In the time before, Charlotte was staying  with Julia Brentorton, her dearest friend from school. Julia and she survived  boarding school together: the dreary grind of everyday Latin instruction, music  instruction, dance instruction, art class, etiquette with the school mistress,  Lady Sipperstein. Etiquette was really the only unpleasant class. "Julia!" Lady Sipperstein would suddenly appear behind her left  shoulder. "Cross your legs at the ankle when you sit in a low sofa. "Walk up the stairs again, Charlotte, and do not sway your  hips this time! You are wiggling in an inappropriate fashion." Lady Sipperstein was a terrifying woman with a bosom that extended  forward like the prow of a ship. She knew to a hair how low one must bow to a  duchess as opposed to a king, and she drilled her students as if they would do  so every day. She was full of maxims: "One dismisses a servant as if he were a young child: with firmness, brevity, and uninterest. . . . The appropriate gifts for the sick depend on where they live: If they live on your estate, instruct the cook to make bone-marrow jelly and bring it yourself, with fruit; if they live in the village, instruct the servants to deliver an uncooked chicken instead. And of course be sure to ascertain that any illness is not contagious before you enter a house: While it is important to show feeling, one must not be foolish." Etiquette was an hour of unnerving questions. "Julia! If a footman enters the breakfast room with an obviously swollen jaw, what is the appropriate response?" "Send him home?" Julia would suggest tentatively. "No! Information first. Is the swelling the result of a distressed tooth or an improper brawl the night before? If he has been brawling, dismiss him. If not? Julia?" "Ah, send him to a doctor?" Julia stammered. "Incorrect. Inform the butler that he should be put on duties that will keep him out of public view. There is no point in coddling servants." For Charlotte, art class was the focus of the day. She was happiest in the white square room furnished only with twelve easels. They painted the same groupings over and over: two oranges, one lemon; two peaches, one pear. Charlotte didn't mind. Julia did. "A pumpkin today...

Product details

• Authors: Eloisa James
• Publisher: Random House USA
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Released: 09.05.2000
• EAN: 9780440234562
• ISBN: 978-0-440-23456-2
• No. of pages: 455
• Dimensions: 108 mm x 175 mm x 25 mm
• Series: Pleasures Trilogy; Pleasures Trilogy; Random House Publishing Group
• Subject: Fiction > Narrative literature