I cut my pearly white teeth on Teresa Medeiros' Breath of Magic and Touch of Enchantment. I read them both in the same afternoon, slack-jawed at the euphemistic (but thorough) sex scenes, and confused by the all the morality: The heroine was a virgin? They got married before they had sex? They got married, period? Where was the unrepentant sleaze I had been led to expect? I took comfort in the other romance novel truism: they were crappy, so crappy as to exceed all expectations. Not only was the natural order of the universe therefore undisturbed, but I was now freed to read any romance novel bearing the Sword of Irony and the Shield of Self-Deprecation.

From that day my triumphant strides have led me to Julie Garwood, Johanna Lindsey, Lisa Kleypas, Lisa Jackson, Christina Dodd, Jo Beverly, Amanda Quick, and many other standard-bearers of the romance genre, but I had yet to reencounter Mme. Medeiros.

Imagine, then, my disappointment as I curled up with Shadows and Lace: it wasn't that bad. The only genuine snicker was prompted by the cover art, and that's always a freebie anyway. Oh, there was the occasional "'tis" and a few French phrases, but not enough to make one lose one's place casting one's eyes up to the heavens.

So, you know the drill: cowardly father gambles away virgin daughter to mysterious peer/pirate/riverboat gambler, virgin daughter's lashes tremble with unshed tears, erstwhile untameable hero reforms just enough to return her (but not enough to take the edge off that sex appeal), she comes back like a starry-eyed boomerang, he discovers he can't imagine life without her, near-mortal injury or illness recommended but not required.

The dark and brooding Sir Gareth of Caerleon wins the use of Lady Rowena Fordyce for a year. Don't worry--he won't use her in that way; he's too busy bedding everything else in a skirt. Little does Rowena know that his heart is enclosed in a wall of guilt and pain. Just a hint: it involves statutory rape, near-incest, and murder. Who can soften (and then harden) such a man? Perhaps a petite, kittenish blonde, who is given to falling asleep in the cutest places, getting into scrapes, and looking just adorable when she's angry.

But what's this little innocent to make of his seedy past? Rowena muses, "God does not fight on behalf of the guilty." Since Gareth is so powerful and successful, does that not mean he is innocent? And he's so masterful... Gareth, jaded (but of course!) by all the hot lovin' he's been getting, finds himself yearning for an inexperienced coquette (read: cocktease), and he sure can pick 'em. During their first encounter? "'Fill me,' she whispered. 'Now.'" This in spite of an established and belabored disparity in their sizes--like, on the lines of lion and pussycat.

Rowena's remarkable facility is enough to keep Gareth saving her charming rump [sic] for 300-odd pages, but they pass readily enough. A jealous lesbian and a soupçon of BDSM, a cultivated tolerance for heroines who stamp their feet and pout, and a steady trickle of incredulity that someone would write a romance novel with such a dark subplot, allowed me to come--at last--full circle, and achieve closure with Teresa Medeiros.

Labels: medieval, Teresa Medeiros, wager