This escalating conflict drives Gabby to some unreasonable actions, as well, and pretty soon I was having a very hard time getting through this book. Gabby and Quill go back and forth like that for the entire rest of the book – Gabby expresses concern and a willingness to help, and Quill responds by making accusations and staging passive-aggressive scenes. In short, rather than understanding Gabby’s wish to spare him pain, he threw a tantrum worthy of a two-year-old.Īnd that’s just the beginning. Feeling rejected, Quill attacks her he informs her that he will take a mistress and accuses her of planning to cuckhold him as well. Gabby is shocked at how much pain Quill experienced, and suggests that they not have sex again unless they think of a good way to prevent his headaches.

Eventually they do consummate their marriage, and he has the predicted three-day headache. If she asks what’s wrong, Quill will either make her feel like a tramp or demand to know if she wants an annulment. He refuses to have sex with her, not telling her why. He is so far from being a reasonable person that it’s impossible to understand how anyone would ever behave as he does, much less how anyone could fall in love with him. But though the headache/sex equation is possible, Quill’s behavior is absolutely not. Whether or not this is based on rhythmic activities, I haven’t heard. But sex, along with other “rhythmic” activities like horseback riding and dancing, gives him severe migraine headaches.Īs contrived as this ailment is sounds, there are actually people – both men and women – who do suffer headaches after sex. But what about that impotence thing? Oh, Quill isn’t impotent. Quill falls immediately in lust with Gabby, and so he decides that he will, after all, marry her, letting Peter off the hook. Gabby senses Peter’s disdain and gets along much better with his brother, Quill. Peter, who spends every waking moment worrying about his status in the ton, shudders with anguish.

Peter is very reluctant to marry anyone, and is horrified when he sees Gabby: she has bad clothes, an outspoken temperament, and (horrors) a voluptuous figure. Quill, the heir, bows out of the engagement due to disability – he was injured in an accident several years before, and is presumed by one and all to be impotent.

Quill and Peter Dewland are the sons of Viscount Dewland, who has promised an old friend of his that one of them will marry the friend’s daughter, Gabrielle. What bothers me is that it breaks the less-known rule, coined by my fellow reviewer Marianne Stillings: Do the characters behave like reasonable people? Or are their actions governed by the needs of the plot? This book has a conflict that’s completely silly, but that’s not really what bothers me. That law is as immutable as the HEA ending. In any romance, there must be conflict between the hero and heroine.

Enchanting Pleasures by Eloisa James