Title: The Christmas Conquest
Author: Claire Delacroix
Date: 2022
Quote: "She had until the morning to decide whether to believe his pledge of love."
Rhys's mother and three older sisters died in childbirth. He contracted a marriage of convenience with the intention of never consummating it, not wanting to fall in love with his wife and lose her. His understanding was that the girl was "plain" but now, a few years later, she's grown up to be quite pretty, and also frustrated by a marriage that feels like a mere business partnership. In fact Catherine has contacted an expert in such matters about an annulment. He wants to seduce his wife, but can he seduce her with safe sex, or must he risk fatherhood? Can cool, pale Catherine push him oast his inhibitions...by scolding him?
Enter Esmeralda, the aging courtesan, a friend of a friend of Catherine's. Disguised as a repulsive, foul-mouthed old hag whom Catherine's friend claims as an aunt, Esmeralda launches her secnd career by slipping pages from a manuscript, "The Ladies' Guide to the Art of Seduction," into Catherine's room. Catherine finds the "book" so valuable she insists that relatives in the publishing business publish it.
Christmas comes into this story only as the pretext for the house party where Esmeralda slips sex tips to Catherine. Despite the title this book is about sex, not eighteenth-century holiday traditions.
Props to Claire Delacroix for portraying a sex worker without prejudice, but I'm underwhelmed by the mixing of genres here. I happen to feel that a good Regency should adhere as closely as possible to the pattern laid down by Jane Austen. Many romance readers clearly disagree. Delacroix has a lot of fans who have bought a lot of her romances. You might be one of them.
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