Since I was on a romance-novel kick, and since I had greatly enjoyed the Bridgerton series on Netflix, a logical next step was to check out Julia Quinn’s Rokesby prequels to the Bridgerton novels, which take place one generation prior. The heroine of prequel #1, 23-year-old Billie Bridgerton, is the older sister of Edmund who will one day father the brood of eight alphabetically named siblings. Billie has grown up as an outspoken tomboy in the Kent countryside, where her childhood best friends were her neighbors, the second, third, and fourth Rokesby siblings. She has always considered their oldest brother, George Rokesby, Lord Kennard, to be a stick in the mud, whereas he has always found her to be a bit much. As they spend more time together as adults, though, they start to see each other differently.

My favorite moment in the book takes place a little over halfway through, during their game of pall mall (a precursor game to croquet):

*

Lady Alexandra let out a loud huff. ”Whose turn is it?”

“Mine, I believe,” George said smoothly.

Billie smiled to herself. She loved the way he said so much with nothing but a polite murmur. Lady Alexandra would hear a gentleman making a casual comment, but Billie knew him better. She knew him better than that pompous duke’s daughter ever would.

She heard his smile. He was amused by the entire exchange, even if he was too well-bred to show it.

She heard his salute. Billie had won this round; he was congratulating her.

And she heard his gentle scolding, a warning of sorts. He was cautioning her not to carry this too far.

Which she probably would. He knew her every bit as well as she knew him.

*

This passage was exquisite, not only as an illustration of intimacy between not-yet-lovers, but also for how it evokes George’s character. As W. Somerset Maugham wrote in Of Human Bondage, restraint can be just “as passionate and as active as the surrender to passion.” The eventual kissing scenes are pretty good too. I didn’t care too much for this cutesy writing style with sentence fragments and very short paragraphs, but for the most part it didn’t get in the way.

I’d known that author Julia Quinn graduated from Harvard and did a brief stint at Yale School of Medicine, but how cool that she also won $79,000 on the game show The Weakest Link!