Free The Official Essex Sisters Companion Guide by Jody Gayle with Eloisa James Page A

with a fiercer emotion. “I know I’m a half-literate dolt.” He said it huskily. “But if you’ll allow me to be Dorimant for a moment, I agree with him: my passion knows no bounds, and there’s no measure to be taken of what I’ll do for you. ”
    She took his face in her hands. “I don’t want poetry, even pretty bits of foolishness from the play. All I want from you is your heart.”
    A moment later he was holding her so tightly that she could hear that heart beating against her cheek. “It’s yours,” he said. And cleared his throat. “This body, my hands, my heart: they’re all yours . . . forever.”
    The Duke of Holbrook never returned to his chambers that night. But thereafter, though his fiancée teased and tormented until the very night before they wed, he stayed to his own rooms. If he couldn’t sleep at night, he spent the hours planning one of the largest, most lavish, and most quickly organized weddings that had ever been solemnized in St. Paul’s.

Introduction to Essex Sisters Series Extra Content
    This section consists of a short romantic novella that I wrote just for the companion, followed by a bonus chapter that takes place ten years after Pleasure for Pleasure , written for the fans on my bulletin board.
    In the years since I wrote the last words of Pleasure for Pleasure , I realized something important: Josie’s miserable experience on the marriage market, singled out and ridiculed for being a “Scottish Sausage,” struck a special chord with readers around the world. I got heartfelt letters from as far away as Slovakia and Indonesia, written by women who sympathized with the pain of a young woman who had to fend off devastating insults at an early, vulnerable age.
    As I mentioned in the beginning of this section, I decided that I wanted to write about the two other women mentioned in Pleasure for Pleasure for being singled out with shaming nicknames: the “Wooly Breeder” and the sister of “Silly Billy.” Neither woman actually appears in the four books of the series.
    The latter comes up when Lucius Felton tries to comfort Josie by telling her that she is not the only young lady ostracized by so-called polite society.

                            “You are not the only one,” Lucius added gently. “Cecilia Bellingworth will have a difficult time shaking the label Silly Billy, and that’s merely due to her unfortunate brother not being right in his head. Darlington didn’t make up that label; I’m not sure who did. But who will brave enough to marry her?”
    A Midsummer Night’s Disgrace answers that question. It takes place one year after Josie and Mayne marry, so I had the fun of bringing them back as a married couple.
    That left the “Wooly Breeder,” a label attached to a young lady whose father made a fortune farming sheep. When I created the ugly nickname, I was trying to portray English high society as a bully culture in which clever comments ruled. At the same time, I wanted to rehabilitate Darlington without minimizing the pain he had caused. He confesses his sins to Griselda, who reminds him that the Wooly Breeder is happily married.
    While I could have written a romance for that heiress, now Lady Windingham, I decided instead to explore the long-term effect of being the name caller, rather than the victim. A Gentleman Never Tells features a hero—the Honorable Oliver Berwick—who first appears in Pleasure for Pleasure as one of Darlington’s close friends. He did not invent the terms “Wooly Breeder” or “Scottish Sausage,” but ever since, he has felt guilty for repeating them.
    In A Gentleman Never Tells , Oliver decides to attend a house party hosted by Lady Windingham, using the opportunity to apologize. Catrina, formerly the “Wooly Breeder,” is happy to accept, but demands a boon: he must make her sister laugh. That’s no easy task, as Lizzie Troutt is only a few months out of mourning and has herself been scarred by cruel