The Official Essex Sisters Companion Guide (6 page)

There’s a kind of literary criticism that argues that we shouldn’t even bother talking about an author’s “intention” because every reader essentially re-writes a book as she reads it, and I guess I’m more of that frame of mind than I would have thought.

Still . . . here I go, wading in where angels fear to tread. BEWARE! If you are nurturing your own sweet progression for Rafe and Imogen, please don’t read this. Why would you want to know what I think about it? That doesn’t mean the relationship developed precisely as I say. I often feel as if I’m watching a movie while I’m writing, and Lord knows, I’m a terrible film critic!

OK, with that slightly crack-brained proviso, I’m going to leap in. The big question is, when did Imogen realize that Rafe was hiding behind a mustache and pretending that he was Gabe? I’ll explicate some structural bits of the book, dividing the crucial chapters into separate discussions.

One thing I want to note up front is that Rafe and Imogen’s relationship continued to develop on the side, in a very deep way, at the very same time that she was engaging in her excursions with “Gabe.”

Obviously, Imogen has no idea of Rafe’s masquerade in the beginning. The deliciousness of writing the first scene with Rafe in a mustache, for me, was staying in
Rafe’s point of view a lot of the time as he kept telling himself that of course, Imogen didn’t really want to sleep with a man—and then discovering that in fact, she
did
. The whole first carriage ride—the first half of
Chapter 19
—was leading to this sentence: “Rafe knew deep in his bones that he would do whatever it took to keep her from knowing that Gabe was indeed in the ranks of Draven and Mayne: men who were inexplicably blind to her charms and couldn’t tell a diamond from a river rock.”

Now, Imogen’s realization of the truth is very slow, and very sweet. But you have to remember that she knows Rafe. And she already loves him, though she wouldn’t think so consciously. Why do you think she fought so hard to get him to stop drinking? Why she resented him, and fought with him, and basically, gave a damn about him? Because there was something about his rough outside and injured soul that spoke to her from the beginning, even when she was in love with her sleek and shining Draven, who turned out to be such a disappointment.

So: one thing I want to point to in this chapter is the following sentence. They’ve just kissed.

“Sophisticated Imogen, the young woman who had astonished—and delighted—the
ton
by flaunting her supposed affair with Mayne, sat on the other seat with the look of someone who had been struck by a bolt of lightning.”

She doesn’t know that she just kissed Rafe. But deep in her soul . . . she’s just been struck by a bolt of lightning. Remember, this sentence follows directly after Imogen’s very wise comment that “Gabe” is in the carriage out of reluctant chivalry, and doesn’t really desire her.

Imogen made some huge mistakes in judging men when she fell in love with Draven (and who doesn’t, when they first fall in love?). She needs to learn to trust her instinct . . . what you see here is her instinct sending her a message, loud and clear.

Going back to the question of disguise . . . Cristobel is also part of the question of when Imogen knew. I invented Cristobel not only because she’s a tremendously fun character and I ended up loving her bravado and sexiness, but also because she is the ultimate person in disguise.

In fact, the whole Cristobel chapter is about pretending to be someone else. The first woman who appears on stage is a well-endowed prostitute who is “posturing,” or pretending to be a statue of a woman in the act of undressing (men paid money for this sort of thing—go figure). She’s wearing patches to cover up spots from syphilis, the unfortunate effect of her profession.

She’s the first example of someone dressing as someone other than she is, and covering up her face in essential ways. I had a lot of fun fiddling with Rafe’s anxiety about being found out during that scene.

Then Cristobel comes on. Now Cristobel is the ultimate pretender. Here’s the description of her voice: “husky and erotic, a promise made in song, a mermaid’s call.” Her songs come from a wonderful collection of seductive verse:
Bawdy Verse: A Pleasant Collection
, edited by E. J. Burford and published by Penguin in 1982. The songs in his collection date from around 1400–1786; I actually judged some too wild for our delicate contemporary ears.

Cristobel is all promise and no substance—because she really isn’t a prostitute, only a singer, and yet her career is built on the promise that she selects one man from
every performance. The key is the one man is always the same one—her husband, the young man who is dressed as a farmer, and whom Rafe says was dressed as a young law student, last time he saw him. The husband is a chameleon . . . the first pretender of the scene.

Cristobel recognizes Rafe. Because there was
one
time when she took a lover. The man wasn’t Rafe: it was Mayne. “He was an earl,” Cristobel says. “What a night I had with him! Your friend is a man among men.” She recognized Rafe, because in her mind he’s associated with a night of pure desire—and desire is key to Imogen’s discovery as well.

In terms of Imogen’s awareness of whom she was with, there’s a crucial moment on page 211: “She thought he was handsome before; now the lights of the tavern played over the planes of his cheekbones and his shadowed eyes and made him look far more than handsome: dangerous . . . And the line from the play describing Dorimant kept running through her mind; Gabriel Spenser, this evening, seemed to have
something of the angel yet undefaced in him
.”

On page 216, she tells him with a frown, “You
do
sound like Rafe!” Later on, Imogen tells Cristobel that she’ll inform the Earl of Mayne that Cristobel sends her compliments—yet how could a professor have an earl for a friend? Imogen hasn’t quite figured out yet . . . but there are certainly plenty of clues out there. One other point: in the carriage, Rafe perversely asks her what she thinks of himself—Rafe. And she refuses to answer.

She doesn’t know . . . and yet . . . the evidence is piling up.

Chapter 25
, the Silchester scene, is crucial in terms of Imogen’s character and her understanding of the Rafe/Gabe switcheroo. Here’s the important thing, as I was thinking of it: Imogen is the kind of person who has a great deal of difficulty listening to her intuition. She knew very early that Draven would never love her the way she wanted him to. Yet she could not make herself understand the importance of that observation, and married Draven anyway.

When the Silchester chapter opens, Imogen already knows—inside—that Gabe in the mustache is not the real Gabe. She’s been showered in hints, from their kisses, to Cristobel’s recognition of Rafe, to the moments I’ve already pointed out. But she just doesn’t listen to herself very carefully.

In the beginning of this chapter, it’s Josie who almost figures it out—even though Josie has had nothing to do with the fake Gabe. She starts talking about how “good an actor” Gabe must be. And that page is followed directly by Imogen thinking about what a good actor RAFE is. She had actually asked him that afternoon how on earth he memorized his lines so quickly.

On page 294, she’s thinking about the kiss she shared with Rafe—and the way he looked at her at supper. “And yet,” she thinks, “did he say anything to her? Show by the slightest gesture or phrase that he wished to kiss her again, or—or anything? No.” Significantly, that’s Rafe and Rafe’s kiss she’s thinking about, not Gabe and the Cristobel scene.

The supposed “Gabe” laughs on the way to the carriage and Imogen thinks that “it was uncanny how much he sounded like Rafe.” This chapter is still dealing with the theme of disguise. I followed the Cristobel scene with a pantomime, because there too the
actors are in disguise—and I wanted the really outrageous ones to be front and center: a man dressed as a woman.

On 302 comes a crucial line: “She could feel the calluses on his hands from gripping the reins of a hard-driving horse.” And that realization is followed directly by Rafe saying that he’s been thinking about kissing Imogen all day and Imogen gasping “You never showed—”

Relate her gasp to the moment above when she thought about Rafe not showing a sign of wishing to kiss her again.

She knows that she’s talking to Rafe and she almost blurted it out right there.

That’s why she says “Oh,” rather foolishly, on the next page.

She has realized who he is, and she knows he’s going to seduce her . . . and that she’s going to allow it to happen with Rafe—because it
is
Rafe. This is why the language changes on page 303 to a rather vague description: “Why else but that she could be seduced, and her companion allowed the liberties he would have had the night before . . .”

My use of the word “companion” is a clue that Imogen knows who that “companion” is. But she’s not going to let on. Look at the bottom of 303 and you’ll see her deciding just that.

I wanted to keep it a surprise for my readers. I thought it was all the more delicious if you weren’t sure (on the first reading anyway) when Imogen found out. I never would have let her make love to Rafe thinking it was Gabe—never. For me, that would have destroyed the romance, and besides she wouldn’t have wanted to.

The one reason Imogen went through with the seduction was because she realized it was Rafe, and she loves Rafe. She has for a long time. She fought for him to live, and
give up alcohol, in a way that she never fought for Draven. She and Rafe have a deep-down bond that means she battled him tooth and nail to make him give up the alcohol—and he at least partially gives up drink for her.

In the bedchamber scene, I disguise the name: “But now she was in a hired room, and her companion was not her husband.” I only had to do it when we’re in Imogen’s point of view, when we’re seeing the action through Imogen’s eyes. She’s just recognized Rafe’s private parts from that early bathtub scene.