Readers bombarded with an infinite variety of terms used to describe the sex act may not be familiar with the term“tupping.” In historical romance writer Jo Beverley’s new novel, Secrets of the Night, the word – and the act itself – is described in frank and amusing detail. Faint of heart take note: Secrets of the Night is not a good subway read if one is prone to blushing. It is, however, an engaging example of the genre, with a plucky heroine that would do a bawdier Charlotte Brönte proud.

The year is 1762. Rosamunde Overton is a young Yorkshire wife with a dilemma. Her husband, the much older, kindly Sir Digby Overton, is both impotent and ailing (rich food and a fondness for brandy have taken their toll), and unless he and Rosamunde produce an heir, their beloved family home and land will pass to Sir Digby’s odious nephew. With her husband’s unspoken consent, Rosamunde must find a man, a stranger, to “give her a tupping” – and impregnate her.

In the first chapter, she finds him. After days holed up in a room together (cue the blushes), Rosamunde realizes that a) she is in love with her virile stranger, and b) that he is none other than Lord Brand Malloren, brother of the Marquess of Rothgar. In modern parlance, she is out of her league.

Secrets of the Night is a heavily plotted affair, with 18th-century social politics, animal husbandry, and pre-pre-suffragette feminism in liberal doses. Rosamunde is an intelligent but meek heroine, who comes into her own after discovering the joy of sex. When she is told she shouldn’t be out at night because “all men are easily tempted,” she retorts “Then perhaps men shouldn’t be allowed out of the house at night.”