Impetuous as a youth, Sophia Nash’s dangerous beauty has learned the hard way, through an abusive marriage, to dampen her spirit. Although we are never treated to the gruesome details of her marriage, we know enough to realize that heroine Rosamunde has paid too much for a moment of indiscretion as a girl.
A kiss from the heir apparent Duke, her unrequited love, was all it took to banish her from her father’s home forcing her to marry the squire.
After his death, she sees no other alternative but to accept a kindness from the now deceased Duke’s grandmother. What she doesn’t expect is that the new Duke seems hell bent on unleashing the wildness inside of her.
I liked this book for the most part, although I found some of the action in the plot a little too overdone. Too many tiny twists make things seem unlikely or overly sentimental. And some of it makes me want to shake the heroine. There is a scene, for example, where she fears attending the Duke’s sister’s wedding because she has been banned by the old vicar to enter the parish church. The way she handles the whole episode makes me cringe, wanting to yell “You are ruining that poor gel’s wedding, you selfish creature!” I think its meant to help the reader feel her long suffering, but instead it made me want to slap her. In any case, the relationship between the Baird sisters is beautifully written and at the end already gives you a sense of Rosamunde’s raw deal.
Generally, it was a nice love story with well written characters and good passion.
Sophia Nash seems a promising addition to anyone’s regular hist-ro hit list, offering conflict, characters, and romance with a crafted hand.
A Courageous Outcast . . .
Rosamunde Baird has lost everything and has no choice but to accept an invitation to spend a season with a dowager duchess and her clandestine ladies club. Determined to stay in the shadows and live quietly, she has sworn never again to come face to face with adventure and temptation, two things that brought her ruin years ago. But then the Duke of Helston dangles before her the very things she craves most…
Lord Fire & Ice . . .
Mysterious Luc St. Aubyn is well known for exuding blistering passion at night and frost the morning after. But dark mystery swirls around this audacious war hero. A tragic past has driven the Duke of Helston to hide the twin secrets of the dowager’s Widows Club and his own infamous writing talent. When he’s blindsided by his reactions to a virtuous siren, he has no choice but to reveal all during a scandal that will doom them …or save them, if only they dare to believe in love.
