This post is taken from Ethan and Catherine’s wedding night in A Most Unsuitable Earl.  I posted a sample yesterday.

It seems the necessity for a timid virgin in all romance novels is overdone.  Granted, it’s more realistic.  I know I got cold feet on my wedding night and was happy to delay the event for as long as possible, even encouraging a few family members to linger around after the wedding ceremony was over.

However, I thought it would be fun to get Catherine so upset with Ethan that she would forget her wedding night jitters.  I wanted to do something different.  I wanted a wedding night that would make me laugh as I wrote it.  And Catherine and Ethan have the kind of chemistry that makes it possible for me to write romantic scene which is far more humor than actual romance.  The whole thing turns out to be something of a disaster, but I won’t spoil the book by saying how.

What I will say (and this is a big hint) is that for once I wanted a heroine who was stronger than the hero in her persistence to explore the physical side of their relationship.  If a hero comes after the heroine, it’s expected.  If the heroine comes after the hero, it isn’t.  And when you mix it up with a heroine’s father (who has pretty much threatened an unofficial duel to the hero because the hero isn’t good enough for his delicate daughter) and a hero’s mother (who goes on and on about the importance of the duty in getting an heir), the book begs for comedy.

So what we have in this book, at least on the wedding night and the day after, is a reversal of roles in the male-female stereotypes.  Though Catherine seems the wallflower The Earl’s Inconvenient Wife and early on in this book, there’s a lot of passion and enthusiasm beneath the surface, but only those close to her will ever discover this part of her.  I knew when I wrote The Earl’s Inconvenient Wife that she wasn’t as boring as Lord Roderick assumed her to be, but I also knew it would take Lord Edon (a gentlemen desperately wanting everyone to believe he’s a rake) to spark something inside of her where she can be the person she truly is.  And it is only her who could make Lord Edon appreciate the value in not trying to be a rake–so he can also be who he truly is.

In this case, opposites really do attract.  😀