How much you enjoy Lessons of Desire by Madeline Hunter will depend very much on how you relate to her heroine, Phaedra Blair. I found her slightly annoying at first, but step by step grew to like her hugely. The masterful way in which Madeline Hunter changes the reader’s perception of this character is one of the main reasons why I granted this novel DIK status.

Lord Elliot Rothwell, youngest brother to the Marquess of Easterbrook and a notable scholar of Roman antiquities, is a man with a mission. The memoirs of Richard Drury, a radical politician, are about to be published, and the Rothwells have received information that they contain a scene which gives substance to a rumor that their late father had their mother’s lover killed. To prevent the publication of this story, Elliot, who does not believe the rumor, will do whatever it takes. In this case, it means following Drury’s illegitimate daughter and heir, Phaedra Blair, to Naples to convince her to delete the objectionable passage.

Phaedra is a true eccentric. She believes in equal rights for men and women, in independence and free love. She dresses strangely – mostly in black. In order to do without a maid or any other servants, she wears her red hair down, and she is never afraid to say what she thinks. In addition, she has published a scholarly volume on mythology. When Elliot arrives in Naples, Phaedra is under house arrest, because her flirtations with two gentlemen of the Court have led to a duel, and she has come to the attention of an influential member of the secret police. Although it goes against her grain, she asks Elliot for help.

Elliot manages to secure her release, but only under the condition that he stand responsible for her conduct during her stay in this part of Italy. In addition, due to a misunderstanding, the secret police now assume that Phaedra is Elliot’s betrothed. When he informs her that he is in charge of her, Phaedra thinks this ridiculous and tries to run away in the night, with the result that Elliot ties her to the bed. As sexual attraction is running high between them, I thought I was in for the usual lusting and fighting taming-of-the-shrew story. I could not have been more wrong.

Elliot demands from Phaedra that she edit her father’s memoir. Not unexpectedly she refuses to do so to accommodate him and the bribe he offers, but – surprise – agrees she will change it if he can prove to her that the rumor is false. (As a side note, I found it very refreshing to see a heroine act with such reasonableness.) Elliot and Phaedra travel to the house of a friend of Elliot’s, also a scholar, in the country. Under the influence of the beauty of their surroundings, and as a result of a further scrape Phaedra gets herself into, she and Elliot soon become lovers. She has had lovers, calling them “friends” – a term he scoffs at – but this affair is more passionate than anything she has ever experienced before. It is very important for Phaedra that their affair carries no undertones of possession (again, Elliot scoffs) and that they both enter into it by mutual agreement.

And now the true magic of the book begins. As lovers, Phaedra and Elliot get to know each other much better, and so does the reader. They respect each other’s scholarship right from the start, but now they begin to understand and appreciate the other’s personality. Elliot, and with him the reader, very slowly learns what events have shaped Phaedra’s character, and that her eccentricity is the expression of an independence that is being chosen deliberately every day and has been achieved at a very high price. Phaedra is no preacher – she never speaks of her beliefs unless asked – and she regards the people around her with remarkable matter-of-factness and tolerance.

In turn, Elliot, who is on the whole the more conventional character, both reveals his own shadows of the past and learns to be more open-minded towards other people, not so quickly judging them by his own – society’s – standards. All these revelations and developments are described with a degree of subtlety and sensitivity that had me breathless at times. I do not want to give away too much about the ending, except that it is slow and intense and entirely fitting with Phaedra’s and Elliot’s characters. I had tears in my eyes when I read it.

About the sensuality rating: There are indeed several sex scenes. However, the focus is so much more on the emotions the characters are experiencing than which body parts are being employed that I would rate this novel “warm.”

I found Lessons of Desire a magical novel about two highly intelligent, independent people who need to learn how to combine lust, friendship and love, in that order. If you like character-driven romances, here is a wonderful book for you.