A Secret Life – #Victorian #WomensHistory #MFRWHooks

For this week’s MFRW Book Hooks, I am going back to Victorian times with an excerpt from Incognito. This taboo romance novel has two plot threads. In the present, Harvard Ph.D. student Miranda Cahill is writing a thesis about Victorian erotica while struggling to understand and manage her own conflicting desires. Meanwhile, she uncovers the secret diary of an apparently proper Bostonian woman from the eighteen eighties whose clandestine carnal adventures seem to mirror Miranda’s own.

My hook is PG, but this book is explicit and explores a wide range of erotic activities – in the context of a committed romantic relationship. In fact, Barnes and Noble recently refused to carry it because the novel includes an age-play fantasy scene.

Sigh. If things follow their present trajectory, nobody will be able to buy my stories.

Anyway, I hope you enjoy my hook.

Blurb

During the day, Miranda Cahill works diligently on her doctoral thesis. At night, she has sex with strangers. Her secret life explodes when she realizes her masked partner at a kink club and the charismatic colleague courting her are in fact the same person – the one man who can teach her to accept her diverse desires, as well as to trust her heart.

The Hook

How should she begin, though? Miranda sat for a long time, pen poised over the paper, reviewing the events and emotions of the last few days. Heathcliff sat on the corner of her desk, fixing her with his typical unblinking stare.

Miranda ignored the feline, her eyes focused inward. Heathcliff’s gaze became a challenge. Still, she did not respond. Deliberately, the cat reached out a striped paw toward her wine glass. With the graceful economy of motion typical of his species, he nudged at the stem, just enough to send a torrent of Pinot Grigio spilling over the desk and diary.

“Heathcliff!” Miranda sprang from her seat to avoid being drenched with wine herself. “Bad cat!” She rushed to get a towel to sop up the moisture. “Oh, Heathcliff,” she said reproachfully, “how could you?”

The cat curled up on the corner of the desk, looking not the least chagrined. Meanwhile, the diary, though wet through, did not appear to be damaged. Miranda arranged it under the lamp, hoping that the heat from the incandescent bulb would help to dry the pages, and went out to the kitchen to wash her hands and refill her glass.

She returned to a marvel. The cream-colored pages baking in the lamplight were no longer blank. Even as she watched, writing darkened and became more distinct.

The hand was even, ornate, old-fashioned. And definitely feminine. Miranda could hardly breathe with the excitement. Someone else had confided in this diary, someone so chary of her secrets that she used disappearing ink for her confessions. As Miranda watched, the date at top of the page became clear.

June 12, 1886

I scarcely know how to commence this account of my adventures and my sins. Indeed, I do not fully understand why I feel compelled to commit these things to writing. Clearly, my purpose is not to review and relive these experiences in the future, for in twenty minutes’ time these sentences will be invisible even to me. Perhaps in the years ahead, I will trail my fingers across the empty parchment, colored like flesh, and the memories will come alive without the words, coaxed from the pages by my touch like flames bursting from cold embers.

I have a secret life, another self, and that secret has become a burden that I clutch to myself, and yet would be relieved of. So, like the Japanese who write their deepest desires on slips of rice paper and then burn them, I write of secret joys and yearnings, and send that writing into oblivion.

Let me begin again. My name is Beatrice. The world sees me as poised, prosperous, respectable, wife of one of Boston’s leading merchants and industrialists, mother of two sweet children, lady of a fine brick house on fashionable Mount Vernon Street, with Viennese crystal chandeliers, Chinese porcelain, French velvet draperies, and Italian marble fireplaces. I devote myself to the education of my dear Daniel and Louisa, the management of my household, works of charity, cultural afternoons. In sum, the many and sundry details of maintaining oneself in proper society.

Though I have borne two children, I am still considered beautiful. Indeed, with my golden locks, fair skin, sapphire eyes and rosy lips, I am often compared to an angel. How little they know, those who so describe me. For in truth, I am depraved, wanton, and lecherous, so lost that I do not even regret my fall.

My husband is a kind, intelligent, and honorable man, for whom I have the deepest regard and affection. He treats me with the utmost consideration and respect; he rarely comes to my bed and when he does, he is profuse with apologies for his unfortunate lust. Alas, he hardly knows or understands me. I understand him to a much greater extent, enough to know that I must lie still and silent under him, not move or cry out as his manhood dances inside me. Everyone knows that for proper women, the rites of the flesh are a trial that must be endured; men are subject to carnal weakness, and women’s lot is to be the passive receptacle of their spending. This is what my husband believes. Knowing he believes this takes the fire from the moment, and makes it easier for me to play my frigid, compliant role.

I know better, though.

Buy Links

Ebook

Kinky Literature: https://kinkyliterature.com/book/362-incognito-secret-lives-forbidden-loves

Amazon US: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0B1N7CTMQ

Amazon UK: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0B1N7CTMQ

Smashwords: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/1147874

Kobo: https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/incognito-secret-lives-forbidden-loves

Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/61138791-incognito

Audio - Narrated by Freya Victoria

Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Incognito-Secret-Lives-Forbidden-Loves/dp/B0BMWG2XQK

Audible: https://www.audible.com/pd/Incognito-Audiobook/B0BMWDKQH2

Paperback (Amazon) - https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0D57SFNSF

Be sure to visit the other authors participating in today’s Book Hooks!

---