Midsummer Moon, by Laura Kinsale
I excerpt a bit from page two of this romance novel, in which the hero is meeting the heroine for the first time:
Her mouth puckered. She lifted her hand, resting one delicate forefinger on that sweetly shaped lower lip.
"Square the coefficient of the diameter of the number three strut," she murmured.
"I beg your pardon?"
An naive female inventor obsessed with flight meets a manipulative Duke who's terrified of heights. With that kind of set-up, you just know that she's going to take him flying by the end.
Merlin Lambourne is an eccentric, absent-minded inventor who was raised by wolves (actually, by an equally eccentric and, as the book begins, deceased uncle in the countryside) and so has no idea that the primitive radio she's invented so she can communicate with her ancient gardener without leaving her laboratory is anything worthy of note. This is because she's fixated on building a flying machine, and anything else-- I mean anything else-- tends to slip her mind.
Midsummer Moon is set in the early 1800s, which is a hundred years before the official inventions of both radio and airplanes, and makes it, as coffee_and_ink noted, a secret history. It's the sort of book where Melin's pet hedgehog, which she keeps in an enormous pocket filled with everything from sunflower seeds to homemade rockets, is not only a source of comedy but facilitates several crucial plot points.
Lord Ransom Falconer, who is so acrophobic that he can't sleep on the second floor of his own mansion, has been sent on a mission to obtain a device built by Merlin Lambourne which will be useful in the war with France. He's not aware that Merlin is female until he meets her, and almost immediately accidentally ingests an aphrodisiac which Merlin mistakes for table salt. Events progress as might be expected, to the innocent Merlin's confusion and delight. Ransom, however, is horrified when he wakes up the next morning, and feels honor-bound to ask for her hand in marriage. But when he goes to fetch a bishop, Merlin wanders out to test a new kite, Ransom comes back and finds her gone and decides the French have kidnapped her, and is so upset that he breaks her kite. Merlin realizes that he does not understand or respect how much her work means to her and refuses to marry him. Then she gets kidnapped by French agents, and he rescues her.
This basic pattern-- happy together, Ransom interferes with her work, Merlin puts her foot down, Merlin gets kidnapped, Ransom rescues her-- is the basic structure of the book. Luckily, it's a romantic comedy (well, this is Kinsale, so it's a rather angsty romantic comedy) so the repetition, especially of the kidnappings and rescues, works to comic effect.
It's not a perfect book-- for instance, Ransom does something toward the end which is not only reprehensible but so stupid and obviously doomed to failure that I felt like the author was holding a gun to his head-- but it's quite funny and entirely charming. Merlin is a great heroine-- fumbling and naive in social situations but handy with a wrench or a tourniquent, easily entranced by the pleasures of the body and the mind, and unshakable in her sense of self. The tug-of-war between her and Ransom over her insistence that her work is not merely what she does but what she is, and his conviction that he needs to protect her from her own dangerous inventions is a serious one, but the novel offers a model for how to work through conflicts without being hateful (unlike The Dream Hunter) or one person having to sacrifice too much (unlike Flowers from the Storm.)
Her mouth puckered. She lifted her hand, resting one delicate forefinger on that sweetly shaped lower lip.
"Square the coefficient of the diameter of the number three strut," she murmured.
"I beg your pardon?"
An naive female inventor obsessed with flight meets a manipulative Duke who's terrified of heights. With that kind of set-up, you just know that she's going to take him flying by the end.
Merlin Lambourne is an eccentric, absent-minded inventor who was raised by wolves (actually, by an equally eccentric and, as the book begins, deceased uncle in the countryside) and so has no idea that the primitive radio she's invented so she can communicate with her ancient gardener without leaving her laboratory is anything worthy of note. This is because she's fixated on building a flying machine, and anything else-- I mean anything else-- tends to slip her mind.
Midsummer Moon is set in the early 1800s, which is a hundred years before the official inventions of both radio and airplanes, and makes it, as coffee_and_ink noted, a secret history. It's the sort of book where Melin's pet hedgehog, which she keeps in an enormous pocket filled with everything from sunflower seeds to homemade rockets, is not only a source of comedy but facilitates several crucial plot points.
Lord Ransom Falconer, who is so acrophobic that he can't sleep on the second floor of his own mansion, has been sent on a mission to obtain a device built by Merlin Lambourne which will be useful in the war with France. He's not aware that Merlin is female until he meets her, and almost immediately accidentally ingests an aphrodisiac which Merlin mistakes for table salt. Events progress as might be expected, to the innocent Merlin's confusion and delight. Ransom, however, is horrified when he wakes up the next morning, and feels honor-bound to ask for her hand in marriage. But when he goes to fetch a bishop, Merlin wanders out to test a new kite, Ransom comes back and finds her gone and decides the French have kidnapped her, and is so upset that he breaks her kite. Merlin realizes that he does not understand or respect how much her work means to her and refuses to marry him. Then she gets kidnapped by French agents, and he rescues her.
This basic pattern-- happy together, Ransom interferes with her work, Merlin puts her foot down, Merlin gets kidnapped, Ransom rescues her-- is the basic structure of the book. Luckily, it's a romantic comedy (well, this is Kinsale, so it's a rather angsty romantic comedy) so the repetition, especially of the kidnappings and rescues, works to comic effect.
It's not a perfect book-- for instance, Ransom does something toward the end which is not only reprehensible but so stupid and obviously doomed to failure that I felt like the author was holding a gun to his head-- but it's quite funny and entirely charming. Merlin is a great heroine-- fumbling and naive in social situations but handy with a wrench or a tourniquent, easily entranced by the pleasures of the body and the mind, and unshakable in her sense of self. The tug-of-war between her and Ransom over her insistence that her work is not merely what she does but what she is, and his conviction that he needs to protect her from her own dangerous inventions is a serious one, but the novel offers a model for how to work through conflicts without being hateful (unlike The Dream Hunter) or one person having to sacrifice too much (unlike Flowers from the Storm.)