They are surrounded by fabulous secondary characters - I loved Piers’ divorced parents and the marvelously named butler Prufrock.
The two learn to like and love one another and their interactions are witty and passionate (although it takes Linnet longer than it should to realize Piers’ impotency is the stuff of legend). Linnet is as intelligent as she is gorgeous and she’s more than capable of standing up to Piers and his almost intolerable rudeness. James does a nice job with her fairy tale. So, off the Wales she heads, the Beauty heading into the lair of the Beast.
Linnet, despite knowing perfectly well the prince did no more than kiss her, agrees to this scheme because her father is insistent, no one in London will speak to her and, well, she rather likes the idea of marriage to an impotent man - she found the whole kissing thing with the prince quite distasteful. Linnet’s father - desperate for a groom - and Piers’ father - desperate for an heir - devise the perfect solution: Linnet will marry Piers, call the prince’s child his, and give the Marchant family a legal, blue-blooded heir.
All of London, including her father, believe that due to a few kisses with a prince and a dress that made her look enceinte, she’s probably pregnant and definitely disgraced. Our heroine, the beauteous Linnet Berry Thrynne, needs a hasty marriage. In fact, all who know him believe his childhood accident left him impotent. (He is not a surgeon - the cutting is done by his handsome French cousin Sebastien with whom Piers works.) Piers avoids anything resembling affection from others and has absolutely no plans to ever marry and produce an heir. He practices brilliant medicine on the locals - he is superb at diagnosing and treating their maladies. He was severely injured when young and suffers from chronic pain in his leg. The caustic Piers lives a life of self-imposed exile in his castle turned hospital in Wales. He’s Piers Yelverton, the Earl of Marchant, and he practices his snarky, deductive medicine in a huge castle in Wales, but he’s essentially House complete with cane, problematic familial relationships, debilitating pain, and a very nasty tongue. OK, so our hero isn’t actually Gregory House. Gregory House, the TV doctor with the crotchety brilliant medical mind. In When Beauty Tamed the Beast, Eloisa James’ second fairy tale based novel, our hero is Dr.
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