Carole Mortimer, $2.99, ISBN 978-1910597781
Historical Romance, 2019
CA Mortimer is a not-so-subtle pseudonym for Carole Mortimer, one reserved for stories of romantic, torrid buggery, it seems. Well, as an open-minded reader, I’m certainly open to possibilities, such as “Is it possible for the author’s bizarre, camp, sometimes good, sometimes horrible style to translate well into pee-pee-to-poo-poo scenes?”
Well, Hidden Lover—the first entry in a series called Regency Men in Love—seems like a good place to start in my search for the answer.
“—until he reaches the age of one and twenty, I leave the guardianship of my son, Tobias Daniel James Bishop, the Earl of Chelmsford, to Lucius Percival Grenville Cranfield, the Duke of Sheffield.”
Well, there we go. The 38-year old manly closeted Sheffield is now the reluctant guardian of the 20-year old Chelmsford, the son of his good friend.
Sheffield isn’t keen on becoming that younger man’s guardian because crap can hit the fan when people find out his sexual preference. He doesn’t want anyone to be drawn into the scandal and dire consequences to follow, should the worst comes to be, after all.
However, Chelmy turns out to be a sensitive, feminine, pretty twink, so Sheffield soon finds himself itching to discover the glories waiting for him under the twink’s bloomers.
On his part, Chelmy only has to look at the walking Tom of Finland England poster boy that is his new guardian and falls in lust at first sight.
This is a plot that is as familiar and old as the first free pornographic artwork on the Internet, and most folks that are familiar with the tropes but won’t want to admit that publicly can guess easily what will follow.
Yes, Sheffield will try to make a man out of Chelmy, in a totally not gay way, of course, because he doesn’t know that the kid is as peen-hungry as he is an arse bandit, while Chelmy believes that his guardian is an unrepentant womanizer. Hence, the lusting that ensue as the two try to navigate past their respective jutting erections.
On a more serious note, I appreciate the author not setting her story in a fantasy 19th century Gaytopia where the crowd applaud and cry “So brave! So stunning!” as our leading men copulate on a raised podium. However, I also think she kind of forgets that as the story progresses.
“I— But you cannot really want me,” Toby protested.
The duke’s eyes darkened. “I want you more than I want my next breath.”
It was all too much for Toby to take in, his own breath coming in jerky gasps as hot tears blurred his vision. “I am no one. Nothing. No more than an inexperienced child in comparison with the men you must have been with in the past. A man such as you cannot possibly—”
I’d think a public shaming and a court case, followed by who knows what will happen next may be a better reasoning as to why Sheffield “cannot really want” Chelmy.
The story, in fact, treats the romance akin to an older man teaching a younger woman all about sex and pleasure,all mentions of the potentially damning consequences of being caught earlier on apparently forgotten.
I know, I know, when the loins are heated, the brain isn’t going to function at its full capacity, but when then would the author not set the story in fantasy Gaytopia then? After all, the premise of this entire series is a club of closeted men finding boyfriends. I find it odd that none of them try to marry or do something more obvious to distract people from speculating about why a bunch of men are always spending time in a building together while never getting married. Had this story, or series, been set in Gaytopia, then the author’s treatment of her characters won’t seem to contradict her very setting.
Still, if I overlook that, this is a pretty standard story that could have easily been refitted with just some minor changes to appendages in used in love scenes and physical descriptions had Chelmy been a woman instead.
While this may seem like a damning back-handed compliment, well, it’s not entirely that. Sheffield is a surprisingly sweet and tender lover, and while I’m prepared to cringe at Chelmy, that fellow turns out to be not too melodramatic or hapless, quite unlike how the genre usually treats the younger twinky bottom in this kind of stories.
The setting and the premise may not stand out much, in other words, but still, the romance is adequate to meet my minimal requirements for such a story.
Do I expect more? Well, I guess I could, if I hadn’t known by now the kind of story I would typically get from this author. I go in knowing the best and the worst the author can dish out, and this one is somewhere right in the middle of okay territory.
