Several years ago, I read Eloisa James’ Enchanting Pleasures and found it irritating beyond belief. I think that this author has developed a lot as a writer since then, as Your Wicked Ways is one of the best historical romances I’ve read this year.

I started enjoying this book on the very first page, when I immediately saw that Helene and Rees Holland are not particularly likable characters. Helene is prickly, critical, edgy, and desperate. Rees, who is also Count Godwin, is slovenly, boorish, and selfish to the point of cruelty. They are both gifted musicians, with all the eccentricities that go with artistry. And they’re married, of course. They have been bitterly estranged since, several years ago, Rees paraded his mistress in front of Helene (and the rest of the ton). Humiliated, Helene moved out, and the mistress, an opera singer named Alina McKenna, moved in. Tongues wagged all over London. In the first chapter of this book, Helene swallows her pride and goes to Rees to beg for a divorce, because she longs to be a mother and will never lay with Rees again. Rees refuses, contemptuously telling her to take a lover. He’s convinced that she won’t, since Helene never took the slightest amount of pleasure in his arms. But when Helene sets about finding a man to father the child she desires, Rees undergoes a change of heart.

No doubt about it, it’s an ugly situation. There’s no question that Rees has committed adultery, and Helene plans to have an affair in order to get pregnant. Neither of them actually cheats during the course of this book, but there you go; if you have an absolute ban on this type of thing, you might as well not even pick up this book. Me, I’m kind of on the cusp. I don’t like books that seem to romanticize or glorify adultery, but I do like books about marriages in trouble. In this book, the adultery was obviously a huge mistake, and the marriage, eventually, gets fixed.

Helene goes to a party dressed to kill. All the men at the party immediately notice her, and Rees can see that she means business. He informs her that he, and only he, will be the father of his heir, and demands that she move back in with him until their child has been conceived. The conditions he imposes are absolutely outrageous, and Helene nearly throws them back in his face. But Rees manages to overcome her objections by doing something unexpected: he begs for her help. The opera he’s writing is going poorly, and he knows that Helene is a musical genius.

The plan they devise doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, if you look at it closely. But it forces Rees and Helene into close contact, not only in the bedroom but over the keys of the piano. Rees must confront the fact that he let something wonderful slip away through ignorance and pride; and Helene accepts that her critical and unyielding attitude didn’t help matters any. Of course, they don’t realize this at first. At first, it seems that the only thing that keeps them together is their love of music.

As I said, Rees and Helene aren’t very likable at first sight, and because of that it’s a little difficult to explain why I liked this book so much. All I can say is that they definitely grew on me. It doesn’t take long to realize that Helene’s spiky personality is a cover for her deep vulnerability. It took me a little longer to get around Rees and his unquestionably rude and nasty behavior. The key to Rees is that he’s an artist, and like many artists, his obsession with his art overrules everything else in his life. He can’t waste time with gentleness and compassion; he’s got an opera to write! But he needs Helene’s help with the opera, and because of this he is forced out of his selfishness; forced to really look at himself and see how abominable his actions have been; forced to consider what she needs.

I grew to love these two imperfect, quirky people. I particularly enjoyed reading about their sexual relationship. In spite of his mistress and some of his other hijinks, Rees is, bar none, the most sexually inept hero I have ever read about, and that includes the virgins. Both Helene and Rees are awakened in each other’s arms. I thought that these scenes, and the way they gradually progress from discomfort to ecstasy, were extremely well-written. This is a case in which the love scenes aren’t just thrown in; the story is told through them.

I wish I could have given this book an A; but the last few chapters let me down. During those chapters, Helene faces a serious threat to her reputation; gossip, as we all know, could be the ruination of a woman. Does Helene turn to her husband to find a way to defeat this vicious gossip? No; she turns to her friends Esme and Gina, the heroines of Duchess In Love and A Wild Pursuit, respectively, and together they hatch a scheme to salvage Helene’s reputation. This disappointed me; it would have been more satisfying had Helene and Rees stood together, helping one another through a difficult time. I feel this especially strongly since the situation was created by Rees; part of his penance should have been to help clean it up. Rather, the book’s last chapters are an expression of unity between the three friends, rather than this heroine and her hero.

Nevertheless, there’s a lot to like about Your Wicked Ways. Its heroine is a strong, talented, vulnerable woman; its hero is a true original who, in spite of his many crimes against his wife, I grew to adore. Both of them mature and develop over the course of the book, and by the end their marriage seems entirely solid and more than satisfactory. There’s even a passionate secondary romance that compliments the main relationship perfectly. This is an unusual and very romantic book, and I recommend it.