(cough) Megan Russert.(cough) Although they just told us she was good. We only saw her in one interrogation actually, and by then her big trick was "I'm sad and demoted." Ooh, not quite all! But I am confident that this book? would totally have a "This time it's personal," mano a mano in it.

OK, this is really more cliche send-up than bad writing per se, but I couldn't resist playing around a little more with good ol' Rod Shaft:

Galloping Cliché

Captain Kincaid shook his head as the tall, black-haired man galloped past on an equally black charger. “There goes another one of those damn romance heroes.”

“How do you know?” Lieutenant Simmons asked.

“First, he’s a duke, rich as Croesus, with no heir, not even a distant cousin.”

“And yet he’s here, getting shot at. I see your point.”

“And they’re always cavalry.”

“That they are. Funny, that. Our cavalry isn’t all that impressive.”

“Yes, but these author-women seem to prefer stallions to competence. Strange--you’d think the phallic implications of a rifle or a cannon would be just as good as those of a horse. Oh, and did I mention that one is a spy, too? Spends half his time behind French lines.”

Simmons’s voice rose in disbelief. “A spy? But shouldn’t a spy be a little more…er…nondescript?”

“You’d think, wouldn’t you? But somehow old Shaft pulls it off.”

“Shaft?”

“He’s the Duke of Ravenscliff, but Shaftington is the family name.”

Simmons sighed. “And he’ll get the girl, won’t he?”

“Of course.”

“What’s a real man to do?”

Susan, that's a riot!

Thing about stallions in battle? INSANE idea. All someone needs to do to send the stallions bananas is dab a rag across the rear quarters of a horny mare, and the stallion? Not controllable.

"He's a complicated man. No one understands him but his woman." Susan, I'm not sure if that's why you called him Shaft, but in my head it is.

The Shaft thing is a running joke with DH--he wanted me to have a character named Rod Shaft, and since I write Regencies, it had to become Rodney Shaftington, Duke of Ravensomething.

The Right Honourable Roderick Shaftleigh-Greatgirth.

t laughs helplessly

And his noble war steed, Levitra.

Mary Who?

I Ellsbeth sat in my her bedroom, combing my her waist length blonde hair. My Her evil stepmother had locked me her up again. The crime? Only getting an A minus on my her calculus exam. What did she expect?? It wasn’t enough that I Ellspeth was Homecoming Queen, Princess of the Forrest, Captain of the Cheerleading squad AND voted Most Popular, Prettiest Smile and Funniest Girl every year since I she was 4. What to wear to the ball? The periwinkle silk that brings out my her cornflower eyes or the rose that brings out the slight smattering of freckles on my her perfect nose? I Ellsbeth sighed the sigh of a girl tormented by my her own beauty.