"The Devil's Delilah" / "The Arrangement" / ("Silk and Shadows")

[fiefoe]

Loretta Chase
A bookish hero and a scoundrel's daughter try to protect her father's scandalous memoir manuscript from scheming Lord Streetham. Streetham's son/Jack's childhood friend, Lord Berne is a budding rake and tasked by his father to seduce Delilah into handing over the manuscript. 我主要不满是怎么可以把书埋在种子底下呢？浇水难道不会浇湿纸张吗？？Chase 以前的regency 里俏皮话真多，又讲究历史背景，相比之下她最近的长篇historial 有塑料感。

• “My maid has a sick headache, Mr. Atkins, though I have told her repeatedly that only women of the upper classes are permitted the luxury of migraines. I fear she has aspirations above her station.”
• said Jack, bracing himself for he knew not what, “but I’ve been sent to apprehend this woman.” “You apprehended me once already,” said she. “This smacks of obstinacy.”
• “Perhaps he can explain why your Lord Streetham is permitted to wander about public inns assaulting defenceless young women. He cannot be very successful at it, since he requires accomplices. I shall recommend he find a hobby better suited to his limited skills.”
• Despite readers’ regrettable affinity for anatomy manuals, directories of prostitutes, reviews of crim con cases, and guides to seduction,
• “That hardly changes the fact that my behaviour was ungentlemanly, to say the least.” How unhappy he was! That rather took the sting out of her own embarrassment.
• “Oh,” she moaned, twisting herself into the corner of the chair and burying her face in her arms. “Now you’re going to be gallant. I can’t bear it.” “Shall I call you names, then, and make us even?” “Yes,” was the muffled response. “And you’d better not be gentle.”
• “Very well done, my dear. Just the right air. Is it not, Darryl? Could Queen Charlotte do any better, I ask you?” “Not when His Majesty is by. I understand he has long, bawdy conversations with the cucumber sandwiches,” was the irreverent reply.
• “A young lady must be capable of blushing,” Lady Potterby pointed out to her grand niece, “or she will appear hardened in iniquity.”
• “Rather like your swell-headed friend, Melgrave, in that way. Only Desmond had more address. Or maybe it was simply intelligence. I don’t know. At any rate, he was the only one of those loose fish I ever could have a conversation with.”
• “Still, there’s no denying we’ve played Mr. Atkins false.” Jack smiled. “That’s absurd. Murray had to wait months while Byron agonised about publishing Childe Harold.”
• “I appreciate your concern,” the Devil added, as Mr. Atkins collided with the door handle, “but I do hate to be fussed over, you know. Ungrateful creature that I am, it makes me irritable.
• An eternity later, it seemed—though it had been but a moment—the feral expression vanished. “Was that the way of it?” he asked, quite as though he had merely recited a verse from the Iliad, instead of practically ravishing her with his gaze.
• “‘How sweet, how passing sweet, is solitude,’” quoted Mr. Stoneham. “But—to make a proper shambles of Cowper—
• “You will make ten times what Murray has on Byron’s Giaour.”
• an inarticulate, tormented brute. Amantes amentes, he reminded himself. Lovers are lunatics, as Terence had observed centuries ago.
• “He’s taken it,” said the unheeding Jack in stunned disbelief. “He knocked me unconscious and stole it.” “Inbreeding,” Mr. Fellows pronounced. “That is the trouble with the aristocracy. In another generation, mark my words, they’ll all be precisely like His Majesty.”
• “You had the manuscript?” Delilah asked shakily. “He stole it from you—not Mr. Atkins?” “Evidently, I got there first.” “Are you excusing him? He attacked you—stole the memoirs from you—and you make excuses?”
• “He made me feel a perfect fool. I thought—well, I could not believe he’d go to so much trouble—disguising himself as a highwayman, no less.
• “I thought he was exactly what she wanted. He has a perfect genius for skullduggery. Who was it finally unearthed Streetham’s connexion with Atkins? Who learned the precise hour Atkins would deliver the manuscript to the printer? Who suggested exchanging one package for another, so that Atkins would not know what had happened until it was too late?”
• “Moreover, though Delilah is too delicate to mention it, I feel certain Mr. Langdon’s behaviour this evening offended her modesty.” The delicate daughter flushed.
• Lord Berne required a moment to digest this speech. “I beg your pardon, sir. Are you giving me your permission?” he asked, astonished. “I have no choice. I am so overcome by your audacity that I have not the strength of mind to resist you.”
• All of which he knew was ridiculous, but he was lovesick and his case was hopeless and, in the circumstances, being ridiculous was virtually an obligation.
• “If you do not kiss me now,” she said slowly, “I will shoot you, and you’ll never have another chance. 'The grave’s a fine and private place,/ But none, I think, do there embrace.’ That is Marvell, is it not?”
• stay, yet you do all you can to keep me here.” Then an awful thought struck him. “Tony,” he breathed. “You’re engaged!” “Not at all. You haven’t asked me.” Her voice was soft and languorous. “You’d better, you know. There’s no getting out of it now.”
• “You had better not do that again,” said Mr. Desmond before his visitor could do more than wish him good morning. “There is hardly any foothold at all, and you might have broken your neck.”

===========================================
Joan Wolf
怎么说？就是一个字，稳。第一人称Gail 是独自支撑马术学校的年轻寡妇，儿子飞来遗产也带来遗产执行人高富帅Savile。Leads 之间的 strong attraction 很动人。最后1/3 属于mystery，勉强可以解释Savile 为什么没早早求婚。

• He gave me a pained look. “I must inform you, ma’am, that I am not a member of White’s. White’s is a Tory club. All the Melvilles are Whigs. I belong to Brooks’s.”
• Good heavens, Gail! I scolded myself. Stop staring at the man. You see bigger muscles than that every time the blacksmith shoes your horses.
• Don’t be a fool, Gail! I thought. Just because the man looks like some kind of a god doesn’t mean you have to play the role of a smitten Greek maiden.
• and I grinned. Don’t become too awestruck, Gail. Remember, you had the owner of this magnificent pile painting your extra bedroom!
• In one thing, certainly, Albert Cole was right and the Melvilles were wrong: Money can only mean nothing to those who have it.
• Savile replied thoughtfully, “It often happens that the most competitive horses, the ones with the real fire, the real drive to win, are the ones who remain essentially untamed.
• “Precisely. Mr. Middleman and I discussed this potentially explosive situation, and we both decided that it would be best if neither Roger nor Harriet was officially put in possession of Devane Hall until the succession was quite clear. That is how I earned the joy of housing both Roger and Harriet until Harriet’s child is born.”
• Aunt Margaret had been too late with her herbal mixture, however. Six months after Tommy and I were wed, Nicky was born.
• He was at the table when I walked in, and the smile that he gave me was little more than the deepening of a fold at the corner of his eye. My heart completely turned over.
• “I would have asked you to marry me sooner if I hadn’t had this dreadful doubt,” he said. “You see, if what I suspected was true, a marriage announcement would only have put you in greater danger.”

===========================================
Mary Jo Putney
要挑剔的话，Putney的问题是历史可信度比较低。女主人设是受过创伤千帆过尽的大家闺秀，却敢轻易和陌生男伴同骑一马招摇过市，现身在女性禁地的卖马场也没有后果，只好姑且信之了。男主复仇对象是女主的未婚夫，所以就compromised 她把她‘救出火坑’，也是让人有点吃不消的。

• and conversation, mankind’s basic entertainment,
• I am here in London, about to be plunged into the heart of respectable English society.” “You make yourself sound like a dagger,”
• But in the bones of Lady Sara’s face, the serenity of her expression, there was a wise, timeless beauty that would be honored in any age, by any race of earth’s children. A sibyl of the ancient Greeks would have had such a countenance. Haloed by the sun, her hair was thick dark honey shot with amber and old gold, as luxurious as antique silk.
• obsessed with the subject of what prince would be a fit consort for your little Queen Victoria.”
• On one side was the knowledge that she was behaving in an utterly irrational fashion by riding bareback through a London park with a wild man.
• Weldon said, “Under English law, it is illegal for a man to earn money from prostitution, but not for a woman. That is why most such establishments are run by females.”
• Charmed, she insisted on giving him a copy of a flagellation classic called Venus Schoolmistress, or Birchen Sports.
• She had wondered what his kiss would be like, and had found not an answer but more questions. Dangerous questions... Breathlessly she said, “Carrying the fan in my right hand like this means ‘You are too willing.’”
• Sara was fascinated by the way frivolity overlaid the prince’s natural intensity. He had the dashing corsair appearance of a Byronic hero, yet he could tease about ducks.
• As a sundial marks only the sunny hours, I prefer to remember only what suits me.”
• “Those curving Flemish gables are the clue. They were very fashionable in the mid-seventeenth century.”
• “True. But it is possible that you could give dullness a good name.” He chuckled. “May I return the compliment by saying that you accomplish the even more formidable task of making respectability seem interesting?”
• He also could not avoid a certain grudging respect for the fact that she tried to live up to her principles of right and wrong. Such principles were the luxuries of people who had led easy lives, but they were not without a certain charm.
• “Of course I am,” she said crossly. “I’ve never before had to discuss the possibility of marriage with a man who has ruined me. I find the prospect taxing.” “Perhaps, like Ross, you should assault me,” he suggested. “Doing so relieved his irritation considerably, and I should quite enjoy it if you did.”
• She didn’t know whether to laugh or weep. “You make me sound like some kind of medicine, to be taken from necessity rather than choice.” “Both, Sara.” There was a rueful note in his voice. “You are my choice, and perhaps also my necessity.”