Lord Pranceling’s Redemption

====== Transcriber’s note: To distinguish the Alice Fraser from our dimension and The Last Post dimension, notation is as follows: Alice(B) for The Bugle dimension, and Alice(LP) for The Last Post dimension. ======
Alice(B): Oh my god! I can’t wait, I’ve listened to these on the podcast and I love the D’Ancey LaGuarde ads.
Alice(LP): Ok, let me go on. D’Ancey LaGuarde.
Lord Pranceling’s Redemption is the 44th in LaGuarde’s Manly Men and the Men Who Love Them series of historical homoerotic detective romance thrillers [Both Alices] with a supernatural twist.
Alice(LP): Hey, let me read the ad.
Lord Edgard Pranceling is a villain, a blackmailer, a dandy, and a cad. His powdered wig, effete manner, and ruby-encrusted heels hide a tormented soul and surprisingly ridged abdominal muscles.
Alice(B): Oooh! Are his abs creamy? 
Alice(LP): [giggles] It doesn’t say, it doesn’t say in the write-up whether his abs are creamy. Allow me to continue. 
His remarkable violet eyes, framed by his gold quizzing glass, look sinisterly cynical, but beneath the be-ruffled front of his starched linens beats a wounded heart. Thwarted in his villainy by Lance and Blade in the prequel, The Lord and His Man, Edgard returns defeated to the Pranceling Country Estates to lick his pride and brood on his foiled plans and guilt regrets. There he is riding neck-or-nothing over the menacing moors of Pranceling Manor [Alice(B) laughs] when he encounters an innocent country mensch in dire distress. Gullivant is a country milkman, the illegitimate child of an earl, herding his cows, and suppressing his homosexual desires as well as his noble heritage. Caught in the crossfire of a fist fight in the local inn, a head wound has left him disoriented on the moors, stricken with amnesia, and nude.
Alice(B): Oh very nice.
He knows he’s not meant to tell anyone he’s the gay heir to a vast fortune but he can’t remember why. Lord Pranceling, infinitely villainous, sweeps up Gullivant to deprave in the cackling privacy of his own manor but is suddenly struck by tender, protective urges to shield the innocent flower of manhood who has fallen thus unwitting and unclothed into his degenerate lace be-ruffled clutches. Pranceling’s heart longs for more than just a meaningless sadomasochistic fling with an amnesiac milkman. Gullivant, unaware of Edgard’s degenerate reputation, is stricken by sexy hero worship for his noble rescuer and wishes only to succumb to the lure of his lavender eyes and abdominal array. Why then has the conscienceless Edgard suddenly been stricken by an urge to protect rather than debauch Gullivant? Could it be true love? Only by reluctantly having sex [Alice(B) laughs] can they possibly find out. How will Gullivant react to Pranceling’s history of sinister deviance and villainous cackling? Will he ever forgive the man and fall in to his surprisingly muscular arms? It’s not until the ghost of the family wolf, [Alice(LP) somewhat falls apart in this bit] let loose on the full moon from the lord’s private crypt emerges to howl a prophecy of true love at the lowering sky that Edgard realises he may have met his mate. With a cameo appearance from Lord Lance and his luscious valet Blade and a heartwarming Christmas vignette with Edgard’s adorably lisping adopted niece, Lord Pranceling’s Redemption will worm its way into your heart. 
The Guardian called Lord Pranceling’s Redemption a refreshing redemption of the mincing dandy trope. And The Times called it achingly anachronistic in its depiction of social attitudes to homosexuality. [Alice(B) laughs]
Available now in all adult bookstores and post-structural social studies lecture theatres.
Alice(B): Now, we do not have a D’Ancey LaGuarde in my dimension, but I have to say I love the sound of them. They’re like a thousand Mills and Boon’s got caught in a wood chipper and reconstructed from scrap.
Alice(LP): Oh, well, I get them free in PR, as part of the advertising package, so if you’d like a set I can send you some digital files to put on your Kindle.
Alice(B): Oh, I’d love that.