Lilwen Jones bounces her bustle down the stairs—she is finally free! But her father has gambled away her plant nursery, her sole livelihood. She has one chance to save her fortunes and her dreams: to seek the legendary white waratah in Australia's wild southern island of Tasmania.
Sawyer Thane is a wildlife hunter, explorer, and a man with secrets. He organizes a luxurious ship journey to remember. He plans their expedition to the last detail. He doesn't lose his temper—not totally—when lovely Lilwen insists on her own way. And he absolutely won't fall for a contrary, plant-loving witch in trousers, as he is not the marrying kind.
As Lilwen and Sawyer scour the wilderness for the elusive plant, rules are optional, danger mounts, and their scorching attraction threatens to set the entire forest ablaze.
Note: moderately explicit sex scenes
Lilwen Jones bounces her bustle down the stairs—she is finally free! But her father has gambled away her plant nursery, her sole livelihood. She has one chance to save her fortunes and her dreams: to seek the legendary white waratah in Australia's wild southern island of Tasmania.
Sawyer Thane is a wildlife hunter, explorer, and a man with secrets. He organizes a luxurious ship journey to remember. He plans their expedition to the last detail. He doesn't lose his temper—not totally—when lovely Lilwen insists on her own way. And he absolutely won't fall for a contrary, plant-loving witch in trousers, as he is not the marrying kind.
As Lilwen and Sawyer scour the wilderness for the elusive plant, rules are optional, danger mounts, and their scorching attraction threatens to set the entire forest ablaze.
Note: moderately explicit sex scenes
January 1901, Melbourne Zoological Gardens
Lilwen Jones wriggled her shoulders, trying to ignore the itchy heat of her black mourning costume in the strong sunshine. She ran her fingertips over the Melbourne Zoo’s famous flower displays as she strode along. Unable to resist, she took a quick peek around and pinched off a segment of a gorgeous rose-scented geranium.
Lilwen jerked guiltily as a pair of vivid amber eyes pinned her with a lethal stare. The tiger! The beast’s tail flicked and twitched with restlessness. She saluted the tiger with her pilfered plant. How well she knew that burning urge to escape.
The animal growled, and Lilwen stepped back, slamming into a hard body behind her. Two strong hands encircled her small but uncorseted waist. Warmth leached through her bodice, her petticoat…to her skin. She hitched a breath.
She swiveled, embarrassed, and the apology died on her lips. Another tigerish gaze skewered her: dark honey and predatory, bright with intelligence. Dark curling hair, streaked gold by the sun, flopped over an elegant-boned face. A bony nose perched above a mobile, curving mouth. A disreputable hat shaded the man’s right eye, and his long leather overcoat hung open over a robust torso, completing her impression of disheveled grace.
“Tyger, tyger, burning bright.” His voice rumbled deep and low in his chest. Lilwen imagined his tail swishing behind him. His lips twitched up and his eyes glinted, sardonic and amused. She sniffed: leather and clean sweat.
She wriggled a little to evade his grasp, but those long-fingered hands tightened on her waist. Not so tight that she couldn’t break free, more of an invitation, a firm caress. For one long moment, Lilwen remained within the tiger’s clutch, transfixed by the tiger’s spell.
“I thought all the beasts were safely in their cages,” she said, looking directly into that amber gaze.
The surprised laugh burst out of him, crinkling his eyes and stretching his mouth wide. He grinned down at her. “I never did enjoy cages, my lady. Or tolerate any form of restriction.”
Lilwen gave a small, involuntary moan of desire. “Oh, how I agree with you!” Then, in case she had sounded a little mad, she continued, “That is, women have so many cages, layers and layers of them. You burst out of one, only to find there is a bigger one around that, and a yet bigger one around that one too.”
The stranger took her arm, placed it in his, and began to stroll with her around the shady landscaped gardens. “So you have been bursting your stays?” he asked conversationally.
Lilwen blushed, stopped. She lowered her eyelashes as her mind whirled. Too late for a polite lie. His fingers had gripped the soft pliancy of her skin and muscle rather than a corset.
This half-savage gentleman called forth a reckless urge swelling within her. She would give him the daring truth.
“As you no doubt felt when you laid hands on me just now. While my father lay ill, I bounced my mini-bustle down the cellar stairs. When he died, I crushed my corsets.”
That deep laugh rumbled through him again. “And may one enquire, has there been a corresponding release of social behaviors?” The corners of his mouth pressed in. Those dark honey eyes had mischief lurking in their depths. She caught the quick glance down at her figure.
She said, serious now, “Changing my dress seems right: the first step to adventure, to finally being my own woman. The old queen lies dying, and the new century will soon blaze forth and extinguish the shadows of the old.” She paused, wriggling as a trickle of sweat crept inside her bodice. “However, I fear that long habits of obedience are not easily broken. Sadly, I am entirely respectable.”
“Then the respectable thing for me to do, having so mishandled you, would be to procure you refreshment. No doubt you enjoy those foolish ices?”
“No doubt! But what luxury, sir.”
Sitting at a tiny ironwork table, trying to eat their ices with a modicum of manners, he offered his name: Sawyer Thane. “Lilwen Jones,” he repeated, drawing out the syllables, his lips pouting on the w.
He is not tame. Not this vital man, with his air of danger, of fast reflexes and instant activity. He wore his freedom as carelessly as his hat. She couldn’t tear her gaze from his person.
Normally, she would have lowered her eyes, kept an outward semblance of virtue and modesty. She had long ago learned to hide her blaze of intelligence and her impatience with the littleness of women’s days.
“Perhaps you are an explorer?” she asked. Her heart quickened within her. “I can hardly think of a life more exciting. To see all those far-flung countries. To brave the jungles of the Americas, to visit the beautiful gardens and forests of the Far East, to see firsthand the strange animals of Indochina.”
“You are interested in explorers’ tales?”
“No!” Lilwen, laughed, blushed. “That is, yes.” She fiddled with the tiny spoon. “I wish to be an explorer myself—of a kind.”
He was silent. She risked a glance up; his face bore no judgment, no conventional shock. His toffee eyes were fixed on hers. A strange expression enlivened his countenance. Wonder? Hope? Something thawed deep inside.
“A plant collector,” she whispered, breathlessly. There. Spoken out loud.
She gazed at him. Was it possible he could understand her dream? “To travel to distant lands, collecting plants I have never before seen, in places one must have desperate courage to venture. I wish…I wish I were that person. Could be that person.”
“How very unusual you are, Miss Lilwen Jones. May I ask what is stopping you? Apart from society’s certain disapproval?”
“So like a man!” Lilwen laughed, and his fierce grin warmed her through. “I have worked for years in my father’s plant nursery. Since he lost nearly everything in the crashes of ’93. I adore plants, but as I tend them, they…”
“Yes?” He leaned forward and one long brown curl spiraled over his left cheek, until he tilted his head to regard her. A long finger hooked the errant curl back behind his ear.
His hands, his fingers, Lilwen thought. So different from other men’s manicured, cultivated hands. “My plants speak to me,” she confessed. She took a breath. “Oh, not literally, of course, but as I stroke their shining leaves and touch their velvety petals, nurture their soft new furry shoots, they whisper to me of exotic locales, climes far away, of adventure and strange peoples.”
“Traveling can be very rugged.”
“Do you think I don’t know?” she retorted. “Mr. Partridge has sat at our table many times, recounting exciting tales of his youth. He was a famous botanist and explorer, you know. But what is your work?”
“I fear you would not approve, should I tell you what it is.”
“And why should you care about my approval, sir?”
“Perhaps your fascination with my tiger has given me pause.”
He stared at her steadily, narrowing his eyes as though making a decision. “My work is not respectable. I catch wildlife for zoological gardens, here and around the world.”
Everything stilled in one frozen moment. Lilwen slammed the remains of her ice to the table. Stared at him. Spiky feelings rose in her gullet, choking her throat. Disgust and crushing disappointment tasted bitter on her tongue. “You are a poacher? You catch these magnificent animals and then…imprison them? And you were laughing at my talk of women’s cages and prisons?”
Sawyer stood up. “Miss Jones, no! Not at…”
Lilwen stood too. Smacked a coin onto the table, which bounced and fell off. She noted with a pang the silver gleam of a shilling, too much for a small refreshment, but she was so enraged and disappointed, she simply could not bend and retrieve it.
“A hunter!” she hissed. “Debasing those proud, wild, free animals.”
She spat on the ground, in probably the most unfeminine exhibition of behavior she had indulged in since she was two years old. “That’s what I think of your ice! That’s what I think of your work. It’s cruel and wrong.”
Sawyer stretched out a long, tanned arm.
Unaccountable tears rose in her throat, burning the backs of her eyes. She turned and strode off, dodging in and out of the shrubberies like a demented child, her skin shivering with anguished rage. Fast footsteps scrunched on the gravel paths. His voice sought her, calling her. He could track wild animals; of course he would find her.
She went where no even half-civilized man would go and retired to the ladies’ ablutions.
****
Lilwen sat in her tiny kitchen, toying with her small plain meal. Just for a few minutes, life had ripped into vivid color, full of possibility and adventure. Meeting the man-tiger had made her crazy dreams seem almost possible. An explorer, she had thought. A plant collector.
But what was she really? A child of 1880s Marvelous Melbourne, that decade of gold, glitz, and glamour, when Melbourne boasted the greatest riches in the entire world. And then, in the early 1890s, came the Great Bust, the fall of the stock exchange, and the banks all shut their doors on their screaming investors, and everything turned to dust.
“What’s the matter with you, lass?”
Lilwen jumped. “Oh dear, I was in a brown study, Flora.” She forced a smile for her far-too-observant nursery assistant, a doughty elderly Scots woman with the steel of hardship in her veins.
“My life is full of impossible choices!” Lilwen paced the kitchen in an unconscious echo of the tiger, frustration fizzing under her skin.
“Yes, Sweet Pea, it’s part and parcel of being your ain woman.”
Lilwen laughed. “You are very wise, Flora. You know, when my father died—”
“A miser and a bully and no mistake! May his wicked shade never darken these doors.”
“I thought I could be whatever I wanted to be.” She smiled at Flora. “I never told you. I found his stash of sovereigns hidden under his bed, and do you know, I threw them all in the air so they streamed all around me like golden promises.”
Lilwen danced a few steps around the kitchen. “I could have brilliant adventures! Collect new plants from exciting places and turn our fortunes around once more. But then I discovered…money disappears, like that!” She snapped her fingers. “And I am so ignorant. How does one actually become an explorer?”
Flora began to make tea, rattling kettles and cups, with an air of weathering a storm. Lilwen lifted their housekeeping money tin from the mantelpiece and surveyed their dwindling hoard of silver shillings. She gave it a shake.
“The very thing that kept me and my father alive—my common sense—is my enemy now. All I can feel is fear. I can only see the problems, looming too large: what if all the money is spent, with no new plants, what would happen? What terrible things might happen to a young woman alone?” She knew, of course. All women did. “And what would happen to you, Flora?”
“Don’t fret yourself, Lilwen lass. Your nursery is making enough and more to get by.”
“But not by much. I must do more.”
“What has upset you, normally so calm and canny?”
“Nothing, I promise. But I wonder. Should I be thinking instead about getting myself a husband?”
Flora made one of those expressive noises indicative of how she regarded the lowly male of the species.
Lilwen said, “I do have suitors, you know. One of my merchant buyers has long been expressing rather clumsy attraction. He is two decades older, fat and jowly, with a wet mouth.” She twirled and curtsied. “And Mr. Partridge, the distinguished botanist, is showing interest. He has gained an invitation for me to attend a society ball this Friday evening. It will be so delightful to attend a ball for once.”
“Your father never let you go into society because he did not want to lose his workhorse.”
“Yes, I understand that now. He always said we were no longer rich and we lacked money for gowns and girlish fal-lals.”
Flora said, her tone severe, “As for the distinguished Mr. Partridge, that man is sixty if he is a day. It is a young man you need, to match that energy and sparkle. Not another shackle like your father, to keep you from your ain youth.”
“How you do go on, Flora! Very governessy. But I am aware what an unusual governess you were. I didn’t know then that girls were not taught proper science and botany! It broke my heart when my father decreed you had to go, and I must work.”
“Well, lass, I thank all the stars we found each other again. You may be an orphan, but you will always have your Flora…now, now, enough of that.”
Lilwen released Flora from the embrace and began to tidy the kitchen. That new life she had dared to imagine for herself was most likely a girlish folly. An impractical dream.
But a tiny, vital spark of hope still flared.
****
On the night of the ball, Lilwen donned a dress shaded the exact rich violet of a rainbow. Half mourning—and she could restrict herself to the quieter figures. She could not entirely refuse the enticing prospect of dancing! Within minutes of her arrival, names decorated her dance card, and she spun and twirled around the ballroom like one of her more dizzying fantasies.
While circling in a staid polka, she glanced around the decorated room. Her mood dipped when she spied no infuriating man-tiger prowling the floor with lithe grace. A foolish curiosity flamed within her: would Sawyer Thane yet attend?
She wanted to banter with him again. To bask in his ready understanding of her dream…To feel those steady hands on her tingling skin.
Despite his appalling occupation.
“My dance, I believe.” The imperious voice grating in her ear was not at all the rumbling tones for which she had been listening. A veined, spotted hand emerging from a pristine white sleeve latched onto her arm. She smelled the speaker before she saw him: faint, stale body odor overlaid with scent.
The polka had finished. Her partner hesitated, waiting for Lilwen to signal acquiescence.
“Mr. Partridge,” she said. “How do you do, sir? Are you sure you would not rather rest on those comfortable couches with your friends? I have invitations enough to dance, as you see, and am quite amused for the present.”
Mr. Partridge scowled at the young man still clasping her hand and moved his bulk to quite cut her dancing partner off from the conversation. “Miss Jones.” His little mouth screwed up like a bad-tempered baby’s. “Would you be so kind as to do me the honor?” He gave a slight sideways bump to further disengage the other man. Lilwen squashed a laugh.
She smiled, curtsied to her previous partner and resigned herself to Mr. Partridge’s rather too enthusiastic attentions. He was one of those who spoke to the creamy swell of her breasts pillowing from the top of her gown.
She danced twice with Mr. Partridge, and then after mopping his brow, he popped a cool beaded glass of sparkling wine into her hand. He took hold of her arm and steered her toward a convenient alcove. His smug and slimy expression called to mind a slug on wet morning grass.
A pair of honey tiger eyes flashed in her mind. She cut a glance over Mr. Partridge’s padded, powdered shoulder. No mysterious hunter at this ball. Yet.
Mr. Partridge was speaking and apparently had been for some time, as he was in full flow, reveling in the sound of his own pompous vowels. “So naturally, as my wife, you will continue to oversee the plant nursery, without sullying those lovely hands any further—”
“Mr. Partridge!” How impolite to reveal she hadn’t been listening to his proposal of marriage. She couldn’t very well ask him to repeat it. “Sir, the greatest desire of my heart is to travel, as you did in your youth…” Worse. Now she reminded him of his years. “Travel. Collecting plants…”
“Nonsense!” He cut her off. “You will be more comfortable in my manor. With plenty of other nursery work in the future, I pray.” He positively leered.
Lilwen’s fabulous new life faded to beige. She clenched her fists. A bright coal of survival stirred to flame within her.
“Sir. I am honored by your proposal, but it appears you expect me to go on as I have before. What then, is the advantage of the married state to me? Currently, I have a little money, I have autonomy, and I can order my days as I wish.”
Mr. Partridge’s face purpled. “I had not thought you so! To go on in this unwomanly way—it must be grief!”
“Oh, aye,” Lilwen said. “ ’Tis certainly grief—sorrow that I have not fought for my true wishes long before this!” She shook him off, ran across the ballroom and into the garden, lit for the evening with hanging lamps and candles, creating a magical, golden paradise.
She stood by the sparkling fountain, her chest heaving with a glorious compound of rage and unfurling elation. A flash of movement caught her eye. A figure striped in golden light and deep shadow stalked through the bushes. Sawyer Thane loped closer, parted a gardenia bush and arrowed straight to where she stood, silver moonlight pooling all about her.
Lilwen’s heartbeat accelerated. She was outwardly respectable. No wonder poor Mr. Partridge labored under a misapprehension—but inside! Oh inside! How her traitorous heart leapt at the sight of Sawyer striding toward her.
“Do not importune me, sir! I am currently wallowing in strong emotion—anger—forbidden to the female sex. You must leave me to eat my chagrin and swallow it down in pieces, like a good woman.”
“Again? But indeed, there is nothing better than indulging in a lovely fit of choler once in a while.”
Lilwen laughed.
He stepped close. He was a creature made of the lantern’s glow and shifting shadows. He placed his hands around her waist. Those parts of her skin that he had touched before remembered his touch: the heat and strength in his hands. The delicate, questioning touch of his fingers. Her body cleaved toward him. She must be holding her breath; her throat tight, she could only gasp in small, fast gulps of air.
His size, the darkness, the leap of her heart as they drew close—her skin skittered with fear and a strange thrilling hunger. His intent gaze, burning dark in the shadows of his face, trapped her own. His steady touch, the very size of him, anchored her, like a safe center in the whirlwind of her mind.
“Lilwen,” he said. She opened her mouth. He stared at her lips. In the half darkness, his head bent. His lips almost grazed hers. “I have been waiting for you. I hoped—not so foolishly as it transpires—that you would be in attendance.”
His teeth gleamed as he released her. “I made one lap of the ballroom, bowed to all those pastel misses, and effected a bold escape. And lurked here, guessing you too would seek the garden.”
Her skin shivered with delicious tremors. Just so did a tiger hunt its prey, all concentrated grace and total focus on the object of its desire. “Stalking me, sir? I am not one of your unfortunate beasts, to be hunted and trapped in a cage for your amusement.” Her voice husked[KS1] [MR2] .
“Lilwen, please listen.” He put gentle hands on either side of her face. “I save animals that are injured or sick. They would die if left in the wild. The zoos care for them and keep them safe.”
Her mind reeled. Her mental image of him cartwheeled.
His voice gritted. “My work is perilous. Wildlife poaching is worth much money. It involves desperate, dangerous men.”
“So you, too, say it is no activity for a woman.” The surge of bitter feeling surprised her, as though Sawyer had betrayed her.
“It depends on the woman.” Sawyer’s smile glowed in the golden lamplight. “Lilwen Jones, why do you not go exploring, if that is the desire of your heart? I have no wish to see a brave female pacing and chewing at her cages.”
She stared at him, her world spinning in colored glass, the pieces of her life rearranging in a fabulous design.
He searched in his pocket. An exquisite gemstone balanced in the palm of his hand, flickering brown and tawny gold.
“How lovely,” Lilwen breathed.
Sawyer put his fingertips delicately on her wrist. Her entire body thrilled to his touch. “The gem is called tiger’s eye. It gives emotional healing, career success, courage, and…passion in the loins!”
His eyes burned in the lamplight as he placed the gemstone into her hand, curling her fingers around it. “I chose it because you loved my tiger.”
“I cannot accept it, sir.” But her hand kept clutching the gem.
“Please. A token of my esteem. And something more: a tiger’s eye to remind you of the wildness within.”
He bent toward her, hesitated. Her lips parted as she gasped in a breath. Large calm hands descended gently on her shoulders. The heat and strength of his muscular body enveloped her. His male smell of leather and bitter herbs mingled with the perfumed night garden.
He brushed her lips with his own. The soft pliancy of his lips pressed with tender dips, then harder, more urgent. His tongue tickled her top lip, then flicked inside her mouth, flirting and tangling with her own.
A sizzling flush of heat melted her within. His hands and arms were on her body; her own fingers sought the broadness of his shoulders, sliding down hard, corded arms. Under her questing fingers, he seemed both strongly connected to the ground like a great tree, and ready to explode into action.
“Miss Jones!” The upper-class male voice was peremptory. Mr. Partridge.
The spell broke. Lilwen blushed in the darkness and stepped back.
“I will find you again,” said Sawyer and vanished into the gold-hued garden.
Lilwen dealt with Mr. Partridge with vague, polite attentiveness.
Poor Mr. Partridge.
For the second time that night, she didn’t hear a word he said.
Lilwen Jones had been controlled by her father all her life. Her only joy was her plants and nursery. After her father’s death, she finds herself responsible for clearing his debts. Though she has the option of marrying, she prefers to be independent. Things take a turn for the worse when she finds she could lose her treasured nursery if she doesn’t pay back a certain moneylender. Angry and frustrated, she makes a deal to find the legendary white waratah, hoping the money and fame from its discovery would erase all of her father’s debt. This was her chance for freedom from debt, societal rules, and an opportunity to indulge in her dreams of becoming an explorer. If only she could control her attraction to the mysterious Sawyer Thane.
Sawyer Thane, a wildlife hunter and explorer, can’t wait to leave Melbourne behind and go on his next adventure. When he meets Lilwen in a chance encounter, he cannot deny his instant attraction to her. So, when the opportunity arises to accompany her on her journey to Tasmania, he eagerly accepts and plans their journey. But Lilwen is done following orders. She makes her own plans, which open up a whole new arena of experiences for both of them. While she loves her newfound freedom, she can’t ignore their undeniable attraction and her growing love for Sawyer.
‘Bouncing the Bustle’ was an immense pleasure to read. The storytelling, characters and vivid descriptions are really captivating. Both Lilwen and Sawyer have their flaws and make mistakes, but with every slip-up, they learn and make amends, which brings them closer to their happy ending. Lilwen is lively, bold, and adventurous with a heart of an explorer; it was delightful to see her breaking free and creating a life for herself on her terms. At the start, Sawyer was charming yet domineering towards Lilwen and her plans. But it was satisfying to see him learn how to meet her halfway and conquer his own set of problems.
Though predominantly a romance, it also heavily focused on the societal change, its constraints, dangers and struggles women faced in Victorian times, which is artfully woven into the story. While I liked the pacing of the first half of the book and thought it was gripping, the second half was relatively slower, with certain themes recurring often. All in all, I loved this story and look forward to reading more of Maryanne Ross’s work.