Seductive Starts

by Courtney Milan

  For instance, he totally misunderstands that what is going on between Smite and Richard has almost nothing to do with the family feud, and everything to do with their personal history.

  He also imagines Smite’s actions are rejections of him, but if you read Unraveled, you’ll see that the things that Smite does in this book—not spend Ash’s money, refusing to go on a walk next to a river—are things Smite would avoid independently for reasons that Ash doesn’t understand. Smite’s choices have nothing to do with Ash.

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  Margaret & her brothers

  Q. Margaret is extremely forgiving of her brothers’ faults. Was there a time when you wanted her to say, “Screw them!” and leave them entirely out in the cold?

  A. Not really. And I don’t think she’s that forgiving, actually.

  I mean, Edmund is a jackass, but Richard isn’t and wasn’t. Richard is stuck up (but so was Margaret, and so she understands that). And they’re both afraid—really afraid—something that Margaret understands because she feels the same things. Richard’s biggest faults are that he doesn’t write to her and doesn’t remember her birthday while he’s engaged in a struggle for his future (and hers, for that matter). What kind of sister turns on her brother under those circumstances?

  We see things enough from Ash’s point of view that we don’t think highly of Richard, but Richard is neither a horrible person nor even a horrible brother.

  From his perspective, even at the end he thinks he’s doing what is best for Margaret (and also for himself). He thinks Ash is using her. If he’s right, when Ash wins, Margaret will have nothing but a broken heart. If Richard’s only way to win is to keep Margaret a bastard, well…at least that way, Richard will have the means to take care of her.

  Richard doesn’t have the benefit of knowing that Ash is sincere.

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  Arthurian Legend

  Q. Is there some meaning to the ring and the Parford coat of arms?

  A. Why, yes, there is! The Parford family coat of arms is described as having a stylized sword figuring heavily in it. This shows up in two particular places: first, in the master key that Ash is given, and second, carved into the stone on Parford’s signet ring.

  You might wonder why the coat of arms is dominated by a sword, when so many coats of arms sport animals. The answer is because Unveiled (and the entire Turner series) was written as a riff off of Arthurian legend. I won’t call it a retelling—I don’t adhere closely enough to any version of the story for it to be a retelling. Also, Arthurian legend is very much a tragedy as far as romance is concerned, and I wanted to write a romantic triumph.

  But this is how it basically runs in this book: Margaret is King Arthur. She was conceived under conditions that might otherwise cast doubt on her legitimacy. The two instances of the sword—the master key and the signet ring—parallel Arthurian legend. The signet ring… Well, it’s not an accident that the ring is a sword carved in a stone. It’s an actual sword. In a stone. Ash idly tries to put it on earlier in the book and fails. Richard tries to put it on and fails. The only one who passes the sword in the stone test is Margaret.

  Richard Dalrymple, Margaret’s brother, parallels Sir Kay: He attempts at first to betray Arthur (Margaret), and thus take credit and the Kingdom (dukedom). But he is, at heart, a good guy, and he eventually does the right thing.

  So, if Margaret is Arthur, does that make Ash Guinevere? Nope. I think the Arthur/Guinevere match sucked to start with. I do not ship them. I’ve already told you who Ash is: He’s the one who gives Margaret Excalibur. Which, depending on which legend you adopt, makes Ash the Lady of the Lake. (By the way, when you read Unclaimed, you’ll see that Mark ships Arthur/Lady of the Lake, too.)

  The only book in the series that explicitly discusses Arthurian legend is Unclaimed. You might think that the chaste Sir Mark is Galahad. But there is another knight who—in some retellings of Arthurian legend—was a virgin. That knight is more famous for the manner in which he lost his virginity, and so people rarely think of him as chaste. I mean, of course, Lancelot.

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  Deleted Scene: between Ash & Mark

  Q. What does Ash think about Mark’s chastity after they come to an understanding?

  A. There was a scene between Mark and Ash that was eventually deleted, mostly because I’d have to stop all the forward motion on the romance to drop it into the end of the story. So here it is now.

  Ash put his hands in his pockets. “But you don’t want—”

  Mark waited expectantly. “I don’t want what?”

  Ash didn’t know what to say, didn’t know how to put it without offending his younger brother. You don’t want to live. Mark didn’t want to grab life, to see new things, to experience. He’d hidden himself inside his own protective shell, and Ash had never been able to coax him out from it.

  “You don’t want to want,” Ash finished lamely.

  Mark slowly pushed himself to his feet. Ash had always thought of him as so damned young—as if twenty years later, that fragile, ethereal child burning up with fever was still at the forefront of his vision. But as Mark walked over to Ash, Ash realized that at some point in the intervening years, his brother had grown up. He wasn’t fevered. He wasn’t small and sickly any longer. He was whip-cord thin, but muscled. He was blond, but not pale. In those years when he’d been gone—and even in the years thereafter, when he’d been working to make a life for his brothers—Mark had grown up. He walked toward Ash now, his stride strong and steady. His eyes burned with an intensity that in any other man, Ash might have thought lethal. But this was Mark. Innocent Mark, gentle Mark.

  When Mark stood a pace away, he drew himself up and put his hands on his hips. “You think I don’t want?” His voice was a growl.

  He couldn’t be angry—Mark never got angry. Ash scowled. “No. Of course not. You have…ambitions. And…and goals. And such like.” He just didn’t have regular human desires, at least not the messy complicated things that Ash felt, deep in his gut. He didn’t look at his brothers and tremble deep inside, fearing that they would never find happiness. He didn’t think of Margaret and have his hands shake, knowing she could never look at him as he looked at her. He was unspoiled by any baser emotions like revenge or lust, and Ash loved him for it. Mark was special.

  But it also meant…well, it meant he didn’t want. Not in the normal human way. And so Ash had to want for him. He had to give Mark the things he didn’t know he wanted, the things his soul desired deep down, but that he’d forgotten to feel after all those years of abstemious living. Mark had been taught not to desire, to give himself up in service of others. He did it so admirably.

  Mark was looking him up and down. His lips were pressed together. Another man in his position might have been angry. But Mark looked at him with…well, with pity. It was damnably unnerving.

  “You think I don’t have desires?” he asked.

  Ash couldn’t answer. His mouth went dry with desperation.

  “You’re daft,” Mark said.

  It was the most uncharitable thing that Ash had ever heard his brother say, and his mouth dropped open.

  “You’re completely daft,” Mark continued. “I believe in chastity, not celibacy. And if you think that translates into a lack of want, you are an idiot. I want. I want very, very badly.”

  But he spoke matter-of-factly, as if he were discussing the price of corn.

  “If I let myself sink into my wanting, trust me, I would wallow as much as you do. If I let myself sink into the experience of wanting…well, I would never get my mind off the scent of a woman when I pass her on the street, or the rounding of her curves.” He flexed his hands almost unconsciously, as if he could feel those curves against the palms of his hand. “Just because I can interpose my will between my wanting and my actions doesn’t mean I feel no desire.”

  “But—”

  Ash had been going to say, But you can’t really understand
what you’re wanting until you experience it.

  But Mark shook his head. “I’m a virgin,” he said. “Not an innocent. Nor even an ignoramus. I know precisely what I’m missing, and trust me, I want it.”

  “If you want so badly, why haven’t you married?”

  Surely it was not for lack of choice. Women flocked to Mark—his blond hair, that air of innocence coupled with strength. With Ash’s wealth behind him, with his own fortune established, he was as eligible as ever.

  “Why haven’t you married?” Mark asked. “You’re thirty-four.”

  Because he’d always been able to slake his wants elsewhere. Until Margaret, when the wanting had begun to run deeper. “I am—I have—that is to say—”

  “Of course not. You wouldn’t marry just anyone. Not for money. Not for convenience. Not for position or power. You’re afraid of the virtuous maidens who so kindly disclaim all their own wants and desires. You want a woman who wants, too, someone who will never, ever neglect your children. You won’t marry until you are certain that whoever you pick will be as far from our mother as you could possibly get. And I don’t blame you. Is it any surprise I’m doing the same?”

  They had never talked about their mother. Mark had always been so…well, so damned good, believing in charity and chastity. Ash had wondered sometimes if his brother had even noticed how deranged their mother had become, or if he’d simply accepted her edicts as right.

  “I didn’t realize you had noticed Mother was…off.” he said lamely.

  “I’m a virgin,” Mark repeated. “Not an idiot.” He rubbed his palms together and looked into the distance. “Mother was a complicated woman. The damnable thing about her was, she was right. She was always right, about everything. One should succor the poor and the needy. One should do good. But…” Mark sighed. “But one should not do so at the expense of one’s loved ones. Too right can be just as bad as too wrong.”

  It almost hurt to look at his brother. He seemed almost incandescent.

  “And so, yes. I remain chaste. Yes, I want a wife. But I want a true helpmeet, a woman who I know will stand by my side. I want a lioness.”

  Ash felt a lump in his throat. He would never have called Margaret a lioness; she was far too cultivated to be compared with any wild creature. But she defended the ones she loved with a ferocity that he yearned for. Even when he’d pressed her she had not once backed down.

  “I want,” Mark said simply. “And when I find the woman I want—when I find my lioness—trust me. I wouldn’t waste my time arguing with you, if I could be out winning her.”

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  Proof by Seduction Enhanced Content

  Q. Where did you get the idea to have Jenny ritually slaughter an orange?

  Your eBook reader software does not support the playing of audio. If you’d like to read a transcript, please visit http://www.courtneymilan.com/enhanced/pbs.php.

  The slaughter of oranges and the almighty banana (2:25)

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  Jenny as fortuneteller

  Q. Jenny’s career as a fortuneteller is an unusual choice for a heroine. What made you decide on that?

  A. Jenny’s career was a roundabout decision.

  The very first book that I wrote—which I nominally called Flight of Fancy—featured a hero who was an ornithologist and a heroine who was…well, she had no real distinguishing features except the fact that she was clever. Her name was Claire, and she was young and needed to marry well because her brother was continually getting in all kinds of awful scrapes. There was absolutely no reason for her not to marry the ornithologist hero—absolutely none—and so it was a book without a story.

  Boy meets girl. Boy loves girl. Girl loves boy. What, then, happens for the remaining 18 chapters?

  I vaguely recognized that this was a problem, and so I invented all kinds of reasons why the two couldn’t be together. One of them was that the hero couldn’t talk to girls because he got nervous. The other was that a friend of the hero’s, named Bernie, decided he was in love with Claire for…no discernable reason. Even I, in my not-yet-a-good-writer state, recognized this was a problem. So I invented a fortuneteller that Bernie relied on, and that fortuneteller told Bernie he would fall in love with Claire. The whole book was a complete farce that ended up unmasking this poor fortuneteller as a fraud blah blah blah.

  It was not the most terrible book never to be published, but it wasn’t great.

  In any event, I was attached to this story for multiple reasons, so after I wrote a second book (also not published, and also for good reason), I came back to this one and diagnosed it with a fatal lack of romantic conflict. But I still loved the characters.

  One day out of the blue, trying to think of how to fix it, I started thinking about that fortuneteller. I wondered what would make someone choose that path. And I wrote this prologue (which doesn’t appear in the book as published):

  In Jenny Keeble’s final year in the private school her unknown parents had paid to raise her, a prim-faced instructor wagged a finger and warned that an unmarriageable woman of little fortune and excess education had only two options: She could become a governess. Or—here, a dramatic pause, and a censorious frown—she could become a courtesan.

  Mrs. Davenport intended to strike fear into Jenny’s breast. Jenny had, after all, been caught leading the other girls into trouble in the pond at midnight. Again. But at eighteen, Jenny could already swindle six spoiled debutantes into paying a penny a piece to take a dip in their drawers in March. She had no notion of fear.

  Jenny took the words to heart nonetheless. After all, she hated other women’s children almost as much as she hated their husbands. At Mrs. Davenport’s urging, she listed her primary skills: Leading others astray. Embroidering. Convincing people to part with valuable pocket money. It was a short, but encouraging, list. Jenny was capable of earning herself a living—and not through needlework.

  I had no idea what was going to happen to the story after that, but once I wrote those paragraphs, I knew that Jenny was going to be in charge. I had a few more false starts before I found the story, which my friends Tessa Dare and Carey Baldwin will explain:

  Your eBook reader software does not support the playing of audio. If you’d like to read a transcript, please visit http://www.courtneymilan.com/enhanced/pbs.php.

  Tessa and Carey talk about Proof by Seduction (2:44)

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  Gareth and Logic

  Q. Gareth is rigidly logical and very opposed to emotion, in general. Was it more parts fun or challenging to deal with him as a hero?

  A. Gareth was 100% fun to write! He was absolutely one of my favorite characters to put on paper, simply because it was just so much fun to bait him.

  But I think it’s a mistake to think of him as logical rather than emotional. Closing down on emotions is in itself an emotional response for Gareth. That’s something that he has to recognize as the book goes on: that it is, in fact, illogical for him to continue to avoid his emotions. The two are not opposed. They can play nicely together!

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  A London Rowhouse

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  Gareth’s arrogance

  Q. Gareth’s personality is an interesting mix of crushingly awkward insecurity and pompous arrogance. People usually think of those traits as mutually exclusive. What motivated you to write him like that?

  A. Wait, do people really think of those traits as mutually exclusive? That surprises me. In my experience, most who come off as pompously arrogant are in fact deeply insecure. Arrogance is usually overcompensation, and it’s a mistake to read it as confidence.

  This is reason #43,109 that I do not buy into the traditional construction of the alpha male. The man who tells a woman, “Yes, I know you want me. Your mouth is saying ‘no’ but your body is saying ‘yes,’ and I’m going to listen to your body” is operating from a place of insecurity.

  If he really believed his
own words, he wouldn’t need to push. He’d know deep in his soul that she would come to him, that he wouldn’t have to override her judgment and taste. He is so secure in his own worth that he doesn’t have to override hers to prove that he’s right. Secure people do not need to push other people off balance; they want to help them be secure, too.

  The most gracious, giving people I have met are often extremely secure. The confident person has no need to make others feel badly about themselves. And conversely, one of the most proud, arrogant individuals I’ve ever worked with was painfully insecure.

  I’ve had people tell me that Gareth is the most alpha of my heroes, and I find this appalling. Alphas are supposed to be leaders of men, and let’s face it—Gareth couldn’t lead mice into a cheese factory.

  Most people who yell at others and run roughshod over their feelings are not leaders of men. Think about the people who have really motivated you to perform in your life. How many of them were massive jerks? And how many of them were people who respected you and your abilities, and treated you fairly?

  Yep. That’s what I thought.

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  Gareth, Jenny and loneliness

  Q. One of the things that Jenny and Gareth have in common is they both are very lonely. Would you say that Gareth’s isolation as the Marquess of Blakely is by choice, whilst Jenny’s isolation as Madame Esmerelda is forced? Or do you think their motivations and options render it more complex than that?

  A. I don’t think it’s that simple. Both Jenny and Gareth are isolated, and it’s a result of choices that they’ve made. In fact, I’d say that it’s very much the result of their vocations. Jenny’s isolated because she’s lying to everyone else, and because all her life, people have told her that she’s worse than she is. She avoids other people and society in general because she thinks that if they knew the truth about her, they would never believe her to be their peer.