Twice Is Not Enough by Emma Lai

Twice Is Not Enough is a quick regency erotica. Great setting, story, and characters! Minerva is strong enough that I wouldn’t be surprised to meet her one day (well, there is the time difference, but still). 

After several disastrous engagements, Lady Minerva Peters is an expert at suppressing her own needs. Only in the darkness of night does she give in to her wanton desires with a fantasy lover. In the middle of a crowded ballroom, she learns her father is not yet ready to let her fade into spinsterhood. Humiliated, she ducks into a dark alcove only to find out she's not alone. Her hiding spot is occupied by a captivating stranger. Before she can escape, the two become voyeurs to another couple’s sexual rendezvous. The atmosphere heats up and so does her body, especially with the tempting offers whispered in her ear. Will Minerva deny her needs once again or will she embrace the anonymity of their seclusion and finally explore her basic impulses and the startling attraction to the compelling mystery man?

William Abbot is a wealthy American who has come to England to find an acceptable wife. A wife who is a blue-blooded aristocrat who is also refined and elegant. One who has her own fortune and could help manage his sister and keep fortune hunters away from his sister. It didn’t help that he kept getting distracted by “other” types of women at the ball. Luckily Lord Peters distracted him by talking about his stables, which William didn’t mind, since he wanted to buy a good (great) horse as a ‘bribe’ for his sister for buying off her last suitor, another fortune hunter. Then Lord Peters mentions his available daughter, and William just wants to escape another matchmaking father!

Lady Minerva Peters is known as the unmarriageable Ice Princess. After two canceled engagements and one dropped serious suitor all to marry her cousins, everyone calls her a jilt. None realize that she found out that both the men and her cousins loved each other after she was involved with the men and society forbids the men from calling off the engagements. So she is getting punished for doing the right thing. And after being around her married cousins (and her body developing into a woman, nationally), she has discovered her hidden passion, which none of the soft men around her inflame. Between having one more cousin left around unmarried and all the soft men, Minerva has decided to resist the matchmaking schemes of her father (or anyone else’s).

Then she sees the tall, handsome American across the ballroom and thinks she might have second thoughts (or at least fuel for her fantasies). When she gets her escort to take her to her father, she overhears him all but giving her to the American! So she runs off to the library very upset. And comes across a couple doing more than she ever overheard in her cousins’ talk about married relations. This is where William encounters her in the shadows and learns just what passions she hides under her cool mask. The heat between them leads him to think they might just be what each other needs. If he can convince her to try more than once?

Twice Is Not Enough was a surprise, a very happy one. Minerva doesn’t fit any of the usual molds. She is not the chunky, chubby smart one, not is she the beautiful spitfire, nor is she any of the other typical models used when writing. She is just a normal person caught in everyday life, maybe more than once it is true. She is attractive, but not exceptionally so; she is smart and strong, but hides is behind a cool front (thus the nickname Ice Princess), and she cares about her close cousins enough to let them ‘have’ her beaus, thus the lost engagements. I was a little blindsided by just how steamy the sex was in Twice Is Not Enough, not that I minded but others might if not expecting it, so be warned. Of course, I did like that even though Minerva was a virgin going into the story (as she should be for the time period) she did have some clue about relations between the sexes, as girl in her twenty’s with married cousins would have picked up some clues. And the instant attraction between Minerva and William even across a ballroom is not portrayed as anything other than physical; really liked that the start IS based on reality. Of course, not sure if anything grows from that or if all of it is based on the physical, but both seem happy with this and many marriages are based on even less in this time period, so can’t even complain about that. Twice Is Not Enough doesn’t hide anything and doesn’t seem to be putting on a pretty face to life’s facts; and all the players seem to get what they want and are happy with the results, sound like a happy ending to me. And I enjoyed the journey.