New York Times bestselling author Susan Johnson delivers a spellbinding story of passion, scandal, and the chances you’re willing to take…
When Someone Loves You
It was common gossip that “Duff” D’Abernon, Marquis of Darley, had returned from Waterloo a changed man. Gone was the reckless youth and in his place was a sullen recluse more interested in tending his horses than attending balls. But now the Marquis was entering the game again, openly flirting with the beautiful, witty, and thoroughly disreputable Annabelle Foster.
Annabelle’s no stranger to scandal. The actress-playwright is rumored to have had liaisons with any number of powerful men, with an illegitimate daughter to show for it. She won’t chance heartache again, even for a man as tempting as Duff D’Abernon. What she offers instead is a compromise: a true friendship between equals.
Each agrees to the terms. A bargain is struck. And an idyllic summer begins. But what starts as friendship soon blossoms into searing passion. And the only thing worse than risking their hearts is not risking them at all…
It's 1816, and actress and playwright Annabelle Foster loves (and desires) handsome Murray D'Abernon, 13th Marquis of Darley, who goes by the name of Duff and reciprocates her feelings. Belle's widowed mother dotes on Duff, and Duff's stately but swinging parents venerate Belle, who has single-handedly reversed the (what we would now call) post-traumatic stress disorder that laid him low following the Battle of Waterloo. But society says they mustn't marry, and she says they mustn't even go to bed, although she is subject to "throbbing between the legs" and his buckskin breeches frequently show "turgid veins inflated and pulsing." Belle's had it, though, after a soul-sickening season with the despicable Walingame, who says she has "no rights" and dares call darling Duff a "fucking cunthound." Men! No woman alive could pass up the chance to hang with Duff; she accepts his wager that he won't proposition her for two months. He, of course, is confident that she'll make the necessary moves. Johnson frequently crafts one-sentence paragraphs, sometimes as many as five in a row, but no construction can introduce suspense into her turgid tale. The sprinklings of period language seem pasted-on. Characters are heavenly or vile. But for those who like their social history liberally sauced with lubricity: yum. (Aug.)
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From Romantic Times, August 2006 issue
When Someone Love You
RATING: 
Susan Johnson
Brava
Setting: Regency England
NOTE: Part of the DARLEY SAGA. Next in the series WHEN YOU LOVE EACH OTHER.
Duff D’Abernon, Marquis of Darley, returns from Waterloo longing for solitude. The once charming rogue hides in the country raising horses.
Drury Lane’s premier actress and playwright, Annabelle Foster, left scandal in London to care for her deceased sister’s infant. Annabelle and Duff are no strangers
To the game of love, but neither is willing to risk heartache until they meet. One glace and Duff is smitten. One lokk and Annabelle is tempted. They compromise on having a friendship, not an affair.
But love is friendship on fire and their relationship blazes with witty repartee and searing passion. When their union is threatened, Duff and Annabelle discover that risk is worth everything.
Johnson continues the Darley Saga with another sizzling love story keyed into
Fantasy—an illict liaison that ends in grand passion. Though not as explict as Johnson’s previous Russian stories, her latest shimmers with wit as she puts her characters into delightfully sensual situations, adding humor to poignancy for a perfect mix. SENSUAL (August, 302 pp., $15.00)
Review by Kathe Robin
From the October 2006 issue of Rhapsody Book Club Magazine:
Dear Readers,
I’m the kind of writer who waits for my characters to drift
into my mind and gradually take form. Apparently I have a cast of thousands
in my subconscious waiting to go onstage—so I never have to wait long
for the perfect person to appear. In the Case of When Some Loves You,
Annabelle Foster made herself known just as I was finishing the first book in
The Darley Series, When You Love Someone. Having recently read a
biography of an eighteenth-century English Celebrity actress, the idea of a woman such as Annabelle was sloshing around my brain. And since I’m a devout practitioner of revisionist history, I thought: why not give Annabelle’s character a better chance at finding happiness in life? As for my hero, Duff D’Abernon, thirteenth Marquis of Darley, he was in need of a bit of happiness too. Badly wounded at Waterloo, scarred in both body and soul by the brutality of war, he was barely holding it together.
Annabelle and Duff meet at a village horse fair one bright summer day, and the Happiness Fairy gets down to business—waving her wand like crazy. I hope you like how things turned out.
Best, Susan Johnson
From the Epilogue of When Someone Love You:
“Prior to their marriage, no one in the fashionable world would have bet a penny
on the Marquis of Darley marrying any time soon. Nor would those in the Ton have given any odds on Annabelle Foster finding a man who pleased her.
If not for that village horse fair, who knows if they would have met as they did?
But then, the Darley luck was much intertwined with horses and beautiful women; perhaps the hand of fate has intervened.
Would fate intercede once again with the next Lord Darley?
Years later in the Crimea, in the midst of war*, the question is answered.
*The Crimean War took place between 1853-1856 between Britain and France and Russia. The war was fought in Crimean Peninsula by Britain and France against Russia. Major battles were fought at the River Alma (September 1854), Balaclava (1854), and Inkermann (November 1854).
