The 1890's, that is. Like Oscar Wilde's very intimate friend, Lord Alfred "Bosie" Douglas, a young man renowned for his youthful beauty. It was his relationship with Bosie that landed Oscar in prison, convicted of "gross indecency". The price of "the love that dare not speak its name", as Bosie put it in his poem, Two Loves.
My male/male romance, Deception, is set in 1895, a time of great excess and great poverty, of sexual repression and joyous romanticism, of great restraint and lavish excess. In this world of extremes, two very different men meet and form a bond, but one based partly on half-truths and deception.
Leander Frampton, a struggling artist who makes ends meet by waiting tables at a cafe, is astonished to receive an invitation of a masked ball along with the costume of a Medieval fool. He has no idea who sent it to him, but it's an offer he can't resist. That night, he meets a man in a gorgeous costume of black and gold. When the masks come off, he realizes it is Rupert, a man he met and bedded two months earlier. The man he has dreamt of ever since.
Nor has Rupert forgotten Leander. But Rupert has more to lose and more to hide. At home in Liverpool, he lives the circumspect life of a respectable art importer. But in London, he's at liberty to indulge his passion for handsome young men. He has a preference for artistic young men like Leander, and a lot of emotional baggage.
Leander thinks he has found a lover, a patron and his muse, but Rupert is maddeningly elusive, appearing and disappearing in Leander's life with little explanation. Rupert arranges for a private showing of Leander's work, but that doesn't mean he trusts Leander with all of his secrets, especially after risky public sex that could have landed them in jail.
Two very different men – one, a businessman, with a great deal to lose and a taste for secret liaisons with beautiful young men; the other a young, gifted artist who will give his all to the right man. Will deception destroy any possibility for a once-in-a-lifetime passion for these two lovers?
Leander is my beautiful boy of the 1890's, golden-haired and artistic, but inwardly he is nothing like Bosie, who was selfish and cold-hearted. Leander wears his heart on his sleeve and is willing to give his all to the man he loves, if only Rupert can overcome his innate conservatism.
Now that I've teased you, an excerpt follows in the next post.
Lyndi Lamont
http://www.lyndilamont.com/Deception.html
Leave a Comment