I invented the publishing firm of Brandy, Bucknell & Bendal, but in fact, the publisher of Lucibella’s books would likely have been Minerva Press. William Lane established the press in 1790 and thereafter published a constant stream of fiction, as well as operating a circulating library. He specialized in gothic horror-romance novels and would have welcomed Lucibella’s heroines-in-peril. While Lucibella’s prose echoes novels at the time, I took the inheritance plot of An Angel’s Form and a Devil’s Heart (a real novel, written by Selina Davenport and published by Minerva in 1818) from a Dorothy Parker short story called “The Standard of Living.”

  To ensure they were accessible to the middle and working classes, novels of this type were typically bound in cardboard with leather labels on the spines. Jane Austen’s Emma (1816), for example, first appeared with “plain gray boards” and a title label made from stamped morocco leather. But Chuffy’s more luxurious bindings existed as well: the foremost bookbinder at the time was Roger Payne, who re-bound volumes in Russian leather with gold borders, embedded pearls, and even (on occasion) silk embroidery that reflected the book’s contents.

  If Mia’s character was inspired by late eighteenth-and early nineteenth-century female novelists, Sir Cuthbert owes his appearance and cheerful nature to one of Shakespeare’s great characters, Sir Toby Belch in Twelfth Night. Chuffy mischievously quotes from that play, as Mia recognizes, but my greater hope is that he brings with him the reckless joie de vivre of his predecessor. Talking of quotations, Mia’s much maligned poetry borrows from some of Percy Bysshe Shelley’s romantic poetry. Finally, young Master Charles Wallace possesses something of the preternatural intelligence of Madeleine L’Engle’s namesake character in A Wrinkle in Time, though arguably Charlie owes more to Charles Dickens’s earnest and captivating disabled child, Tiny Tim.

  Seductive scoundrel Edward Reeve needs a wife: a lady whose perfect reputation will persuade society to overlook his questionable past. The moment he meets Lady Regina Cholmondeley-ffynche, he knows that she is the one he wants.

  But Regina would never marry a man like Ward. As the author of a wildly popular etiquette column, she can’t afford to risk society’s disapproval . . . no matter how tempting she might find the notorious charmer’s advances.

  Determined to win the hand—and heart—of the spirited woman who has bewitched him, Ward will take any risk to convince Regina they were meant to be together.

  He promises her heaven . . .

  She gives him seven minutes.

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  Seven Minutes in Heaven

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  About the Author

  ELOISA JAMES is a USA Today and New York Times bestselling author and professor of English literature, who lives with her family in New York but can sometimes be found in Paris or Italy. (Her husband is an honest-to-goodness Italian knight!) Eloisa’s website offers short stories, extra chapters, and even a guide to shopping in Florence. Visit her at www.eloisajames.com.

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  By Eloisa James

  FOUR NIGHTS WITH THE DUKE

  THREE WEEKS WITH LADY X

  ONCE UPON A TOWER

  AS YOU WISH

  WITH THIS KISS (a novella in three parts)

  SEDUCED BY A PIRATE (a novella)

  THE UGLY DUCHESS

  THE DUKE IS MINE

  WINNING THE WALLFLOWER (a novella)

  A FOOL AGAIN (a novella)

  WHEN BEAUTY TAMED THE BEAST

  STORMING THE CASTLE (a novella)

  A KISS AT MIDNIGHT

  A DUKE OF HER OWN

  THIS DUCHESS OF MINE

  WHEN THE DUKE RETURNS

  DUCHESS BY NIGHT

  AN AFFAIR BEFORE CHRISTMAS

  DESPERATE DUCHESSES

  PLEASURE FOR PLEASURE

  THE TAMING OF THE DUKE

  KISS ME, ANNABEL

  MUCH ADO ABOUT YOU

  YOUR WICKED WAYS

  A WILD PURSUIT

  FOOL FOR LOVE

  DUCHESS IN LOVE

  Coming Soon

  SEVEN MINUTES IN HEAVEN

  Copyright

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  FOUR NIGHTS WITH THE DUKE. Copyright © 2015 by Eloisa James. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

  EPub Edition APRIL 2015 ISBN: 9780062223920

  Print Edition ISBN: 9780062223913

  FRIST EDITION

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  Eloisa James, Four Nights With the Duke

 


 

 
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