A Duke Makes a Deal, by Matilda Madison

I love the blue of the cover, and was intrigued by the blurb, so I requested an ARC, without knowing anything else about the author.

Beware: acute social anxiety; gambling addiction; kink shaming; instalust; dominance play; evil other woman; explicit vanilla sex.

A Duke Makes a Deal, by Matilda Madison

During the 1822 London season, two people from very different and distant worlds meet over the course of a deplorable and scandalous scene, the aftermath of which changes their lives.

Clara is twenty-three, and while she’s fairly confident of her own worth and personal charm, she understands that, for the peerage, her attractiveness is dictated by the size of her dowry and eventual inheritance. Silas is close to thirty years old, and accepts that the only reason he hasn’t been fully ostracized by his so-called peers is because he’s both wealthy and a duke.

After a disgraceful private debacle becomes public knowledge, our duke proposes a fake if rather public courtship, as a means to help elevate Clara’s social standing and restore her reputation. Neither of them expect to become true friends, never mind their mutual physical attraction–though of course they should have: this is a genre romance novel.

The publisher’s blurb sets up the scene thusly:

When this duke wins a wife, all bets are off.

When nouveau-rich Clara Woodvine attends her first high society ball, she’s expecting it to be the most wonderful night of her life. Unfortunately, it turns out to be the worst. When Clara overhears her would-be fiancé has bet her and her dowry away in a card game to the Duke of Combe, aka the Divorced Duke, all hopes for a happily ever after seem lost.

Silas Winters, the Duke of Combe, has spent over a year brooding in misery after the end of his toxic marriage. Saddled with crippling anxiety and the reasonability of recovering Clara’s reputation, Silas proposes a marriage based on friendship and nothing more. Clara accepts, but only on the condition that she understands this is a marriage of convenience because Silas is determined never to love again.

But when the past comes back to haunt them, will Silas realize that love is something he can choose? And will Clara be able to stand up for those she loves, even if she must do it alone?

The Woodvine family’s money is very, very new; the father is either a teacher and inventor, or a tradesman and inventor, while the mother was once a housemaid to someone in the lower aristocracy. Their marriage was once exclusively a partnership, but over time their relationship evolved into deep and abiding love. As their only child, Clara hopes that her own marriage will follow a similar path, now that a viscount has declared his “undying love” for her, even if her feelings for him aren’t anywhere near that strong.

“Of course, she would say yes. He was a viscount, for heaven’s sake. An eligible, handsome, charming viscount who was close to her own age. He had all his hair, his teeth were straight, he didn’t seem moody or ill-tempered, and while she suspected that he was in desperate need of funds, her dowry should be more than enough to smooth that trouble away, and then there would be nothing to stand in the way to their happiness.” (Chapter 1)

After it all goes to hell on a card table, Silas feels somewhat guilty for his role in Clara’s humiliation; despite his own struggles with social anxiety, he pays a visit to apologize to her personally, and is intrigued against his will when she doesn’t fall all over herself to absolve him of all wrongdoing. It’s not that she’s rude, but now that he’s paying closer attention, it turns out that on top of being rather unimpressed by his rank and consequence, she’s rather attractive–and in her company, the debilitating anxiety that’s been his constant companion for more than a year is barely noticeable.

Still, Silas has his own problems, and would have happily kept his distance from Clara, to suit both their preferences, if the blasted bet hadn’t become public knowledge. Once it has, his protective instincts immediately rise to the fore. Of course, it doesn’t hurt that spending time with Clara would give Silas the opportunity to explore what is it about her that helps calm his anxiety.

“And it wouldn’t hurt her reputation if it was reported that she had caught the attention of a duke. Scandal-ridden though he was, his title still carried weight. It could provide her with some protection.” (Chapter 6)

Clara, however, remains unimpressed; if it were up to her, the family would return to their country home, and she would remain unmarried; who needs the attention of men who consider themselves her superiors and want only her dowry? Alas, her father’s business ventures require him to stay in town for several months longer, where there are many impoverished younger sons and other fortune hunters willing to importune the family for the duration; eventually, she agrees to the fake courtship.

“It is a smart plan and I don’t find you objectionable. Besides, you said you wouldn’t leave until I agreed. I agree, which means you may leave.” “Are you only agreeing to get rid of me?” “Possibly.” (Clara and Silas, chapter 7)

So far, this is more or less standard genre romance fare, but the author took some risks that elevated the story for me. One of the most interesting aspects is that the main conflict between the protagonists is less about class differences, and more about emotional intimacy.

It turns out that Silas’s first marriage had revolved mainly around sexual kink; he enjoys dominance play, and his first wife is a true masochist who craves physical pain and emotional chaos. She would provoke Silas, including cheating on him, then he would punish her, momentarily satisfying her needs; lather, rinse, repeat. Eventually, their needs diverged too far; when she essentially demanded that he share her with another man, full time, Silas finally reached the limit of what he would do to make her happy.

“Soon Silas had learned the true depth of her depravity. Her pain tolerance was unlike anyone he had ever met and Silas still wasn’t sure if he’d genuinely enjoyed inflicting so much on her, even when she begged for it.” (Chapter 4)

It is important to note that the word “depravity” is used to signify kink, in the sense that it’s not “normal” to have such desires; Silas is riddled with guilt over his own proclivities, as he blames his sexual desires for the ugly cycle of abuse the marriage became.

When Silas broaches the possibility of offering for Clara, she doesn’t jump to accept him, but instead asks him to clarify what the marriage would entail, specifically on the matter of sex, and he’s all, “I’m over the need to dominate”, and she’s all, “But you don’t need to be”; only it’s all oblique remarks and half-voiced sentiments, and it’s such a great way to address the issue when neither of them have the words to discuss kink with each other–especially Clara, whose entire sexual experience consists of a few kisses.

Silas, who has grown to care for her, but who also conflates love, sex, and harm, is determined to never hurt her. He’ll marry Clara, and he’ll bed her–he is a duke and requires an heir, after all–but he won’t love her, and therefore, she won’t be hurt. And he most definitely will not indulge his “baser needs”.

“Regardless of how much he wanted to, he didn’t want to pull her into his depravity.” (Chapter 9)

And so they marry, and while their sexual relationship is good, nothing else between them really is; Silas may indulge in passionate, if vanilla, sex with her every night, but he ignores her during the day, and Clara is increasingly unhappy. Eventually it is her, once again, who forces the issue, which in turn sets the stage for the happy resolution to the last-act crisis.

“What could she say? That she wanted him to open up to her? That she needed to understand the evident pain he carried within him? That she wanted to help? Good lord, it all sounded too dramatic to put into words. And yet, she needed to tell him everything or she would explode.” (Chapter 14)

This turned out to be a more interesting story than I thought it would be, even though the writing voice is rough and the pacing is uneven, and overall the book needed tighter content editing and a good copy editor.

I have two main problems with the book. One is that there are too many threads in the story that lead nowhere.

There’s Silas’ mother’s disapproval and coldness thrown in, then never touched upon again. There’s the sequel bait involving his two oldest friends, one of whom disapproves of the marriage, and then never shows up again. There’s the plot thread involving Clara’s childhood friend Holly, who’s destitute and also supporting her younger twin siblings, and therefore on the verge of marrying a much older man–who, it’s barely insinuated, is probably gay.

I should note here that homosexuality is not treated like a sin or beyond the pale in other ways by either main character; there’s even a fleeting implication that Silas may be bisexual–and that, too, is left unexplored.

The second problem is that the author chose to bring back the ex-wife for angry confrontations with both Clara and Silas, in order to force the later to not only realize his feelings for Clara, but to actually express them to her. Up to that point, and despite Silas’ negative feelings about his ex-wife, the text had granted her a modicum of humanity and respect; we are who we are, and “unusual” desires don’t make us evil, after all.

That final twist is not only contrived, it flattens her character into “evil other woman” in a way that left a bad taste in my mouth.

There are other issues that a good editing pass would have solved; to better integrate some of the more modern sensibilities present in the book (gambling addiction is not a new phenomenon, but the term itself was not in use during the Regency period, anymore than the term “alcoholism” was), and to eliminate some of the most egregious instances of repetition of facts, as well as to fix some of the strange word choices, outright typos and missing words in the text, which may have been addressed in the published version.

On balance, I may eventually give the author another try, but probably not soon.

A Duke Makes a Deal gets a 7.75 out of 10

This book comes out today, June 11.