Despite publishers’ claims that historical romance is dead or dying, so many authors are doing really interesting things in the historical space, and among them is Anna Cowan, who just entered the scene with The Duke, an alternate Regency where women can inherit titles. Here, courtesan Celine, fearing the guillotine, begs the icy Kate, Duke of Howard, to save her, but after a night of passion, Kate abandons her. Years later, destitute and desperate, Celine reappears with proof of Kate’s most dangerous secret. If Kate will not help Celine find a wealthy husband, all of London will learn of Kate’s past crimes. But the longer the two spend in each other’s company, the more they grow to respect each other, and that passion between them never died.
The thing about alternate Regencies where society is more accepting of this one particular thing but otherwise everything completely resembles the actual historical period is that they are very hard to pull off. If women can inherit titles, serve in Parliament, and marry other women, for example, how am I meant to believe her survival depends so heavily on finding a man?
The Duke, however, works for me where others have not because it is made very clear that these female lords are a quirk of English law specifically and the men tolerate it, not least because there are only a handful of them, but the freedom afforded to those few female lords does not extend in the same way to women at large. This allows Cowan to maintain the general vibe of a traditional Regency romance, but also populate it with the openly lesbian versions of familiar character types such as the cold, tortured duke and the drunken rake (whose book, by the way, I am absolutely dying for). It felt like a real and complete world, the Regency a bit to the left, rather than a full wallpaper historical.
I also have to commend this book on a plot level because I am really not a very big plot reader personally, and this book had me physically reacting to all of the twists, which I very rarely do. I loved this book for the romance—Kat and Celine are individually two of my favorite romance leads, and together even more so—but I also found the political maneuvering so compelling that I would not have been able to put this book down, even if the romance were somehow removed. I particularly admire Celine’s clever brain, both for her intentional steps and the ones she made simply by being herself.
I never quite understood the sentiment behind “I’m chewing on the furniture,” until I read this book. It really did feel like an older historical romance, but full of hot lesbians, which means it is basically a perfect book. This book was hot, and I won’t rest until I have a whole series of butch lady aristocrats and clever women bringing them to their knees. If you read one historical romance this year, make it The Duke by Anna Cowan.
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