Stand and Deliver by Scarlet Blackwell
This is actually a book that won me over in time and not from the first pages as usually a book does. I'm very much the reader that, if at page 5 is not yet taken by the book, goes back to the blurb to see if I missed something, than read the last page, maybe the before the last page (I know, I know, shoot me on the place!) and then, if nothing else happens, I close it and open another one. No friends, I'm not such a martyr to finish a book I don't like, and so I don't post of book I don't like at all.Said that, Stand and Deliver arrived to me with a big handicap, it's a menages a trois. Usually I don't read them, but this was an all male menages and plus it was an historical romance, so, well, I decided to give it a try. Another handicap was the starting point of the story, a young earl kidnapped by two highwaymen who becomes their private sex toy... well, a part from the "highwayman" factor, it didn't seem an accurate historical romance, and I have my idea: or you are perfect in what you write, full details and all, or you are at the opposite, the historical setting is barely there, and you instead focus on the characters. Scarlet Blackwell chose the second way.
Lucien is a young earl indeed, comes to his wealth maybe too soon. At nearly 30 years old, he spent all his life doing nothing, and now he is obviously bored. When his coach is cut off by four masked men, Lucien should be scared, and instead he is bored. He doesn't need the money he has with him, he could be very well give them to the men and being happy and alive, but he instead decides to not "stand and deliver". He dares one of the two leaders of the group and obviously he looses the challenge, managing only to see in face the other man. The same man who now forbids to his fellow highwayman to kill Lucien and instead kidnaps him.
Ambrosius is the man who saves Lucien and instead Dante is the one who would have preferred to kill him. They have a strange relationship, a man linked them, Sebastian, Ambrosius' lover and Dante's best friend, and now that he is died, the two men seem to find in each other comfort. But Dante is full of rage, and he thinks all the wealthy men he robs are the enemy, and instead Ambrosius is more the mourning type. With them there are also Robert and August, two lovers who play the role of silent best friends, usually characters that are not fated to last in the story, but don't worry this is not the case. All four of them live in a cottage in the forest, and no, it's not a retelling of Robin Hood, they don't rob the richer to give to the poorer, from what I gathered that is simply another job for them.
The main focus of the story it's not the "strange" career chosen by Ambrosius or Dante, or the tiredness of life that distresses Lucien, it's instead the play of domino among the three men (and even a bit with Robert and August, even if this couple remain exclusive). Lucien thinks to be in love with Ambrosius, but lusts after Dante. Lucien believes Ambrosius and Dante to be in love, and so he would not be against the idea to be third in the menages, if only for the chance to be with Ambrosius. Dante wants first to kill then to bed Lucien, but at the same time he behaves like he is trying to please Ambrosius, like if he is gifting him with a new toy to distract the man from the pain of losing his former lover. In all of this Ambrosius is the perfect mourning romance hero, with an aurea of sadness and imploring eyes, always trying to "say" something to Lucien, but actually never saying.
That's, the play between the three it was what kept me reading. Oh yes, there is sex, a lot of sex, even a threesome, and it was probably good, but the sex wasn't the main event in the story. The sex was always a tool, to persuade, to comfort, or to barter, and it was always used in the right way. The sex was not free and in this way it was right.
I usually don't like when the sex is too much in comparison of the story, and I'm true, I wasn't expecting for Stand and Deliver to balance it as good as it did. Lucien is for sure the better character, above all since he didn't change: he was and is and will be always a bored son of the aristocracy who has found a new toy; Dante and Ambrosius can believe that Lucien is their captive, but Lucien and the reader know better.
http://www.total-e-bound.com/product.asp?strParents=&CAT_ID=&P_ID=581
Amazon Kindle: Stand and Deliver
Publisher: Total-E-Bound Publishing (October 12, 2009)
The Rainbow Awards: Phase 2: http://elisa-rolle.livejournal.com/82368
![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif){kind=small}
A Note in the Margin by Isabelle Rowan 
A Report from Winter by Wayne Courtois 
Bound by Deception by Ava March 
I'm an old romance reader, old since I like the romances of the '70 and '80; I'm not that old of age, but in Italy those romance arrived more or less 10-15 years after their officially release in the United States. And so, when in America the Western Romance was becoming a passed fashion, I discovered it. There is one that was and still is, one of my favorite, Morning Glory by LaVyrle Spencer, the story of an ex con (framed for the murder of a prostitute) who is hired by a widow with two little sons and a third arriving. It's a wonderful romance and it was later made into a movie with late Christopher Reeves as the hero. But more than Morning Glory, my favorite, that I read and read again, was The Rainbow Season by Lisa Gregory. Probably to many of you the name Lisa Gregory says nothing, but she is now more famous and read, as one of the queen of Regency Romances as Candace Camp. But sincerely I think that the Rainbow Season, the love story set at the end of the XIX century between the bad boy, and ex con, of the town, with the young spinster who is in love with her brother in law and decides to marry the hired man of her late father, is and will always be her best novel. There is only another one that can compete, Satan's Angel by Kristin James, the story of a lawless who falls in love for the woman he kidnapped, a woman who was traumatized when she was still a child, and now she is maybe too simple, unable to see the evil in other people... but Kristin James is Lisa Gregory, so, you see, it's obvious why I like that romance as much as the other one. 
I'm an old romance reader, old since I like the romances of the '70 and '80; I'm not that old of age, but in Italy those romance arrived more or less 10-15 years after their officially release in the United States. And so, when in America the Western Romance was becoming a passed fashion, I discovered it. There is one that was and still is, one of my favorite, Morning Glory by LaVyrle Spencer, the story of an ex con (framed for the murder of a prostitute) who is hired by a widow with two little sons and a third arriving. It's a wonderful romance and it was later made into a movie with late Christopher Reeves as the hero. But more than Morning Glory, my favorite, that I read and read again, was The Rainbow Season by Lisa Gregory. Probably to many of you the name Lisa Gregory says nothing, but she is now more famous and read, as one of the queen of Regency Romances as Candace Camp. But sincerely I think that the Rainbow Season, the love story set at the end of the XIX century between the bad boy, and ex con, of the town, with the young spinster who is in love with her brother in law and decides to marry the hired man of her late father, is and will always be her best novel. There is only another one that can compete, Satan's Angel by Kristin James, the story of a lawless who falls in love for the woman he kidnapped, a woman who was traumatized when she was still a child, and now she is maybe too simple, unable to see the evil in other people... but Kristin James is Lisa Gregory, so, you see, it's obvious why I like that romance as much as the other one. 
