Fans of Eloisa James & Julia Quinn discussion

I picked this because it’s a true classic, because it has one of the best meet cute scenes ever, because it’s set in hunting country which we hear a lot about in historicals but rarely actually see, and because it’s a great start to a book.

Heroine was jerked out of her thoughts by a warning shout. She stepped quickly back to clear the way for a brawny man carrying an amazing quantity of bricks in a hod. He nodded his thanks as he raced towards a new house rising up where lately there had been a market garden. A cart full of the bricks stood in the road waiting to be unloaded. There was so much new building now that Melton had become the Queen of the Shires. After all, the town had become the mecca for the hunting fraternity.

Foxhunting had slowly been growing in popularity over the past fifty years or so, but it was only since the turn of the century that the addicts of hunting had realized the unique advantage offered by Melton Mowbray.
There were three hunts which every man of the chase wished to follow—Hugo Meynell’s famous Quorn, the Duke of Rutland’s Belvoir pack and the Earl of Lonsdale’s Cottesmore. Melton sat plump in the middle of them all. Each pack of hounds was out only a couple of days a week, but with a base in Melton a man could reach all three and so, with luck, follow the hounds six days a week throughout the season.
Hunter’s paradise.

The people of the area were renting out every available room and new buildings, like this one, were springing up all over town. Heroine shook her head and moved on. She did not entirely approve of all the changes. It was true that hunting mania had brought prosperity, but she remembered nostalgically the sleepy town of her childhood. Now it was scarce safe to walk the streets in the high of the hunting season when the town was packed with wild young bucks ripe for trouble, on or off the field.

But it was still a pleasant place, especially on such a beautiful October morning, mellow after a soft overnight rain. Many trees still held their leaf, shining in the sunlight, bronze, copper, and gold. Late roses bloomed in a nearby garden and a squirrel scurried by with an acorn in its mouth.

Heroine loved the cycle of the seasons, but these days they seemed to pass so fast. She was twenty-six years old. Firmly on the shelf and virtually past her last prayers. For a long time she had not minded being the quiet daughter, the plain one, the one who would stay home and look after her father. She had certainly not envied her pretty younger sister when Anne had married Sir Hubert Keynes. Sir Hubert was a pompous young fool, and Heroine wondered how Anne could tolerate him for two minutes.

These days, however, she was aware of a restless dissatisfaction, though she was not at all sure what she desired. Certainly not another Sir Hubert. Nor could she contemplate a change in her life so long as her father needed her to run the estate.

In fact, she told herself sternly, she had better apply her mind to business instead of whimsical fantasies. She opened her record book as she walked on, reviewing the purchases and sales made at the market and checking the list of supplies she had to order before returning home.

The heels of her mother’s old-fashioned half-boots clipped smartly on the cobbles with each step. At only five foot two, Heroine felt she needed every advantage when she went to the cattle market, but the heels on the boots made her footing precarious on the wet cobbles and she kept half an eye on the road before her.

There were people about, but only servants running errands or making deliveries and country people going to and from market loaded with purchases. As she turned into the more fashionable streets even these became fewer. As she had predicted, what society people were in town were fast in their beds.
She was pondering whether to buy some of the first crop of Seville oranges, which were expensive as yet but which would make wonderful marmalade, when a shriek made her look up. In one of the new narrow houses, a window had been pushed open and it was from there the shriek had come. A tall man came out of the house and stood looking up. Before Heroine could prevent it he took a few steps backwards and collided with her.

Her reticule and book went flying, and Heroine herself was knocked off balance. With the agility of a cat the man twisted and grasped her in strong hands as she teetered. There was an ominous crack from the heel of her boot.

Stunned, Heroinelooked up at the most handsome face she had ever seen. Lean. Unfashionably brown. Royal blue eyes shining with hilarity. Crisp glossy dark curls under a fashionably tilted beaver.

“I’m terribly sorry,” he said, obviously struggling with outright laughter. “I—”

A china bowl flew past them and shattered on the cobbles. “Be damned to you, Hero!” The shriek rent the air. “Go to hell, where you belong!”

Heroine gaped up over his shoulder to see a red-faced woman leaning out of the upper window with most of her body hanging out of a loose silk wrap. Tousled Titian curls massed around what had obviously been intended by God to be a pretty face.

The man began to turn, his hands still on Heroines arms. The woman reached behind her and threw. A beribboned oval box sailed through the air to knock his hat flying. The box burst open, and a pungent cloud of violet-scented powder billowed out over both of them. The woman shrieked with laughter.

The man choked and let Heroine go. He stooped, ripped up a tall weed complete with muddy roots, and hurled it with deadly accuracy at his attacker. She was still laughing as it hit. She stopped and opened her mouth to start another blistering tirade, but after an alarmed look at the gentleman she shut her mouth, retreated, and slammed the window shut.

Stunned, coughing, and waving away the pungent powder, Heroine still had to admire such ability to silence a harridan. When the man turned back to her his face was smoothly expressionless. He coughed again, brushed a volume of powder out of his dark curls, grimaced slightly, shook himself, and then turned his attention to Heroine .

Her large plain straw bonnet had caught most of the deluge, and he deftly removed it and beat the powder off downwind. Dazedly shaking her serviceable dark pelisse, Heroine felt as if she’d stepped into a violet-scented hurricane. Her bewilderment increased when an elf popped out of the half-open door of the house.
A delicate creature, shorter even than Heroine, with a mass of silver-blonde curls and huge blue eyes, the elf was dressed only in a filmy knee-length smock and showed a great deal of slender, shapely leg.

The elf and Heroine stared at each other blankly, and then it disappeared. Heroine blinked. The tall gentleman spoke as he came to stand in front of her.
“As I was saying,” he drawled as he settled the bonnet back on her head and deftly retied the ribbons, “before we were so rudely interrupted, I beg your pardon.” He brushed at his sleeve and then shrugged and desisted. “I think that does more harm than good.” He looked down at her, and a touch of sardonic amusement lightened his features. “We’ll just have to bring powder back into fashion, won’t we?”

Torn between annoyance and unwilling amusement, Heroine shook out her skirts and said, “Hair powder, perhaps, if you can afford the tax, but body powder?” After a moment she realized what she had said and went red. When she looked to see his reaction, however, he was picking up his hat and her reticule and book, and paying no attention to her words at all.
Arrogant, she thought. Abominably arrogant. A typical London buck come to lord it in Melton and chase foxes—a Meltonian.

He returned her possessions to her. “Perhaps I may make amends by escorting you to your destination, ma’am.”

One embarrassment subsided only to be replaced by another. It was finally dawning on Heroine just what kind of scene she had interrupted. On top of that it couldn’t be clearer that he had no enthusiasm for being in her company.

“No, thank you,” she said as coldly as possible. They both reeked of violets to a cloying degree, and she maliciously hoped it would embarrass him even more than it would embarrass her.

Even her coldness left him unruffled. “As you wish,” he drawled. He produced a card. “I’m Hero, as you may have heard. Staying at the Old Club. If your clothes prove to be unreclaimable, apply to me for recompense.”

“Thank you, but that will be unnecessary,” Heroine said frostily, annoyed at being taken for an upper servant though she deliberately dressed very plainly for these trips. She turned to make a dignified withdrawal and almost fell as the heel of her boot snapped off.
Again he gripped her arm, though he released her as soon as she got her balance. He bent and retrieved her heel from where it was wedged between two cobblestones. He looked down with interest at her footwear and raised one elegant dark brow.
“Quaint,” he remarked, and Heroines lips tightened. “If you care to raise your foot like a horse, ma’am, I’ll see if I can fix it, but I doubt it will work.”

“I don’t have far to go, sir,” Heroine said, and held out her hand for the heel. “I will manage, I think.”

He placed the wooden heel into her hand. “My dear lady,” he remarked with an edge to his voice and an air of excruciating boredom, “I don’t bite, and I only abduct women if I find them wandering on deserted moors at full moon. You will be much more comfortable if I lend you my arm as you hobble to your destination.”

This was undoubtedly true, and trying to teeter her way over the greasy cobblestones would be undignified at best and dangerous at worst. Still, heroine wished heartily that she did not have to accept his assistance. She looked around, but the street offered no more suitable escort.

She glanced at him. He was clearly a gentleman of the ton, though not quite a dandy. Beneath their silvery powdering his dark jacket and buckskins were of the highest quality, and his top boots gleamed. He was arrogant and rude, and from the scene she had witnessed he was clearly not a gentleman of unimpeachable morals, but surely he was adequate to support her a little way down the street.

Looks like she needs a keeper, since she has no common sense.

I don't know the book or the author I think...

It’s Jo Beverley Emily and the Dark Angel

I def haven't read it :)

I have no idea how i missed the puzzler!

Leigh-Ayn wrote: "I have no idea how i missed the puzzler!"

I haven't received notifications all week until today. Goodreads put something on their Help thingy saying that it was down for maintenance. Not sure if that was worldwide or just specific places.

Dark Angel I have not read but will

I did not get this post sorry