I’ve had Bound By Your Touch on my reading list for a long time, probably because at some point it was recommended by Malin or Mrs Julien or both. As per usual, a rec from these ladies turned out to be a pretty lovely romance.
Heroine is Lydia Boyce, a spinster bluestocking (my favorite!) who works for her father in the trade of collectible Egyptian artifacts. Boyce Sr. is an academic archaeologist actively excavating, and Lydia is essentially his business manager back in Egypt. She earns her meet-not-so-cute with Viscount Sanburne when, in the middle of one of her lectures, he interrupts to show off a new piece to his father, in attendance. Annoyed at his rudeness, Lydia proclaims Sanburne’s artifact a fake; however, she later learns that the forgery originated in one of her father’s shipments. Embarrassed and determined to make it up to Sanburne — despite his original faux pas — and salvage her father’s reputation, Lydia promises to discover the origin of the forgery and reimburse Sanburne’s buyer.
Working together on the case, as it happens, the two get to know each other in pleasantly surprising ways. Sanburne, despite his reputation as a rake and something of a drunken louse, is actually quite intelligent and is able to engage Lydia’s mind. And Lydia had, unbeknownst to herself, charmed him immensely during their initial confrontation, so though he was already enamored of her sharp wit, he was also encouraged to discover that her passions extend beyond archaeology.
This romance just works. I find that I can’t specify beyond that what is so excellent about it, but ultimately this just serves as an example of a) an author doing great work with charismatic, compatible characters and b) the right book at the right time for me.
Oh, I haven’t read this one but they make an appearance in That Scandalous Summer, which focuses on Elizabeth Chudderley. It was good but not my favorite Duran. Does Chudderly make an appearance in this one as one of Sanburne’s out of control friends? I’d be really curious to see how she was portrayed in previous novels!
As a matter of fact, she is in this one! Her role here is to be kind of a front for Sanburne, in that he’s been “linked” to her and everyone assumes they are engaged, but they’re actually just friends and she’s drunk all the time and needs rescuing by Phin at least once. I’m guessing he’s her match later?
No, they make a reference to Phin and his romance but Elizabeth’s book the the start of a new series so it’s someone she has vaguely heard of but never met.
But I got the impression that Elizabeth had shown up previously because I was on Duran’s website trying to figure out if Lydia had a romance, and Duran made a comment about this book and how she was worried that Elizabeth’s novel would get dark until she figured out the hero which made me super curious about what kind of character she was in earlier novels.
Oh interesting! So yeah, in this book she was essentially nice and non-threatening to Lydia, but she was definitely the “wrong kind of drunk” a lot. You felt bad for her but she was a tertiary character and not in any way antagonistic enough to register as a “problem” character, but I imagine that in her own book Duran would have had to address the backstory of her husband and some form of alcohol abuse?