A Dangerous Love

March 31, 2008
In Joyce's latest de Warenne Dynasty Victorian romance (following The Perfect Bride), Ariella de Warenne is an extremely well-traveled young gentlewoman with radical thoughts and an independent lifestyle. Viscount Emilian St. Xavier is half-gypsy, and his hatred for the gadjos\x97non Gypsies\x97threatens to consume him. When his gypsy family makes camp on the de Warenne estate, Emilian discovers that his mother was killed as a result of bigotry in Scotland and vows revenge against the gadjos. Upon meeting Ariella and discovering her attraction for him, he at first thinks that, like other English gentlewomen, she only wants him for sex. When she asks for his friendship, he decides that she will make the perfect instrument of his rage\x97despite the honorable Englishman in him. The basic \x93virginity for revenge\x94 plot is common, and while Ariella is a genuinely radical thinker, Emilian is eye-rollingly over the top\x97 except at the very end, where he seems very much flesh and blood.