#CBR5 Book 19. "The Way to a Duke's Heart" by Caroline Linden

Page count: 384 pages
Rating: 4 stars

Charles de Lacey had a massive falling out with his father, the Duke of Durham, because when he was 22, Charlie wanted to marry a penniless girl of unsuitable family, and his father made sure the marriage never happened. Now Charlie's father is dead, and he discovers that the late duke also had a youthful indiscretion, but that said impulsive marriage may cost Charles his title as duke, and make him and his younger brothers illegitimate. While his two brothers initially started trying to sort out the whole scandal, one through legal means and the other by tracking down the blackmailer, they've both gone and fallen madly in love with their new wives, demanding that Charlie himself save the ducal title, his estates and their fortunes.

Having tried desperately to be the best ducal heir ever until their falling out about his ill-advised romance, Charlie was all the more determined to be the biggest disappointment possible afterwards. Known throughout England as a rake, a scoundrel and seducer of women and generally good for nothing, Charlie is rather shocked when his brothers demand he take matters into his own hands. He starts in Bath, where his brother Gerard discovered the name of the man who posted the letters. At the hotel where he's staying, he runs into a haughty young widow, who unlike pretty much every other woman he's ever met, has absolutely no time for him, and seems to regard him as a nuisance rather than God's gift. As she seems to be doing business with the potential blackmailer, he wonders if she's an accomplice in the plot against the de Laceys, and even follows her and her elderly companion in order to ascertain the truth.

Mrs. Tessa Neville has learned the hard way that charming and good-looking gentlemen are not to be trusted, she's been burned before, and has sworn off men entirely. She's also learned that most men are either disbelieving of or completely put off by her intelligence and business sense. Managing her brother's estate and advising him on financial matters is a very rewarding life for her, she doesn't need gorgeous and notorious noblemen swooping in and charming the wits out of her companion. Once she spends more time with the Earl of Gresham (as the title isn't legally his yet, Charlie doesn't call himself a duke), she discovers that he's not just a handsome face, and that he seems to have a lot of time for her cleverness and forthright opinions.

The previous two de Lacey brothers both fell in love very quickly indeed, but both seemed to at least spend a little bit of time getting to know their significant others. Tessa goes from pretty much loathing and mistrusting Charlie, to being head over heels in love with him. The flaws in his character are actually really well explained in this book, as is her wariness towards men and romance, but she still changes her opinion of him pretty much overnight, and that seemed a little bit too sudden for me. Seriously, they spend less than a week in a muddy little village, while she's investigating a canal scheme her brother wants to invest in, and Charlie desperately tries to find anything else in the world to do rather than go through boring old ledgers to investigate his father's clandestine first marriage.

I see why Charlie fell for Tessa, but her opinion goes from "get away from me" to "please get me out of these wet clothes and ravish me" (because she does indeed turn up on his doorstep, at night, in the pouring rain) in about 2 days. It seemed like a pretty boring village, but at least her companion entertained herself with lurid novels, she didn't just throw herself at the first handsome guy who showed her the least bit of interest.

Still, despite the extremely sudden change from dislike or at least indifference to mad, passionate love on Tessa's part, I really enjoyed this book too. The final revelation of what actually motivated the blackmail and caused the "Durham Dilemma" was nicely done, and having to sort out his own troubles led to impressive personal growth in Charlie. I suspect I may have to go back and check out Caroline Linden's back catalogue, to see if her previous novels are as entertaining as these.

#CBR5 Book 18. "Blame It on Bath" by Caroline Linden

Page count: 384 pages
Rating: 4 stars

Gerard de Lacey may be declared illegitimate because of a clandestine marriage his father, the recently deceased Duke of Durham, entered into in his youth, before he married Gerard's mother. A year before his death, the Duke started receiving letters blackmailing him. Now the London gossips won't stop talking about the "Durham Dilemma", his brother Edward is busy trying to prove their legitimacy through legal means, and his older brother Charlie, the heir, is mainly staying far away from the whole business. Gerard thinks the best way of solving the situation is tracking down the blackmailer. He also plans on finding himself a rich wife as soon as possible, so that he can secure his future, even if the scandal is not resolved in the de Lacey brothers' favour.

The blackmail letters were posted from Bath, so Gerard resolves to go there. Before he even leaves London, he may have solved the issue of securing a rich bride. Lady Katherine Howe, a recently widowed lady, approaches him at an inn, offering him marriage and her enormous fortune of nearly one hundred thousand pounds. She needs a husband in a hurry, or she'll have to marry her dead husband's unpleasant nephew. She knows Gerard needs money, in case the courts declare him and his brothers bastards. What she doesn't tell Gerard is that she grew up not far from the ducal seat in Sussex, and has nurtured an unrequited infatuation for him for over a decade.

So Gerard suddenly finds himself very much married, to a complete stranger. It doesn't take him long to see that the combination of Katherine's beautiful, drama-queen mother, and her much older, stern and overbearing former husband have had a massive impact on her self-esteem, confidence and general demeanour  She seems desperate to please him, and is extremely surprised every time he wants to spend any time talking to her or you know, have marital relations with her. She's even more surprised to find out that sex can be fun and enjoyable. Of course, he also needs to learn that actually sharing his thoughts and feelings with his wife is good, she won't just be distracted with more smexy times every time difficult topics come up.

I mentioned that I liked the fact that the heroine in the last book in the series, One Night in London, was a widow with a happy former marriage, who seemed to have a very positive attitude to romance, sex and relationships in general. Well, here we get the opposite. Poor Lady Katherine has been told that she's plain and dull and unattractive since she was little, and her mother has made sure she got everyone's attention at all times by making sure her daughter dressed in frumpy, unflattering clothing. Then she was married off to a much older man, who mistreated her and had several affairs.

So it's no surprise that she built her infatuation of the gallant young Gerard de Lacey up as something wondrous, and decided to go after him when he was finally in a position that he was unlikely to accept her offer of marriage. He really does a very good job being patient and understanding and encouraging, insisting that she buy colourful and pretty dresses and not cower all the damn time. I can't really fault him for being so thoughtless that when he finally gets a lead in the blackmailing case, he goes off for weeks without sending her word, because it's established that he's rather impulsive and rarely thinks things through carefully.

I still enjoyed this book a lot, if maybe not quite as much as the first book in the series. Next up - the resolution of the whole blackmailing scandal, and the eldest brother Charlie's book.

#CBR5 Book 17. "One Night in London" by Caroline Linden

Page count: 384 pages
Rating: 4 stars

First of all, I have no idea what the heck is going on with the cover of this one. God knows what she's actually doing, my husband has several theories, but all of them pretty much qualify in the NSFW category, so we'll just leave it at that. Covers like these make me so very happy that I have an e-reader, because while I'm really not at all ashamed to admit that I enjoy romance novels, and read a lot of them, this is just not a cover I would want to display while on public transport on my way to work and back every day.

Lord Edward de Lacey is second of the Duke of Durham's three sons. On the Duke's deathbed, he confesses to Edward, and his youngest son, Gerard (the heir to the title is a wastrel and a rake who apparently had a massive falling out with his dad, and doesn't show up in time for the passing of his father) that he has a rather inconvenient secret he's been keeping. In his youth, before he became a Duke, he married a woman in secret, and never really made sure the marriage was dissolved or checked whether said woman was dead before he married his sons' mother. He's been receiving threatening notes that suggest someone knows about this, and the three young lords will need to figure out what actually happened, or their entire inheritance is at stake.

Gerard, the soldier, and apparently also the hot-headed one, goes off to try to track down the blackmailer. Charles, the rakish older one appears completely unbothered by the fact that he may not be a Duke after all, but fairly destitute with a scandal attached to the family name. Edward, who was always the calm and sensible one, who's been running the family estates and business for years, decides that the best way to solve things is to hire a clever solicitor, and prove their claims in court. If the Courts award Charles the title, no later proof of illegitimacy will be able to strip them of their inheritance.

Lady Francesca Gordon is a young widow who needs to hire a solicitor to gain custody over her niece. When her sister, and later brother-in-law died in short succession, no will was written to grant her legal custody over the girl. Francesca is convinced that the girl's stepmother is taking advantage of the girl's inheritance to support herself, her useless artist brother and the twins she bore shortly after the death of Lady Gordon's brother-in-law. Most of the men she talks to, refuses to take the case. She has finally succeeded in convincing one, when he rushes off and drops her like a hot potato, because Edward de Lacey wants to hire him instead. Francesca is furious, and shows up on Lord Edward's doorstep to tell him exactly what she thinks of his underhanded tactics. He's rather baffled by her impertinence, and makes her realise that he had no idea he had "stolen" her solicitor away from her.

Because Edward foolishly confessed the truth about his father's indiscretions to his fiancee, he in short order finds himself with a dissolved betrothal and the gossip rags speculating wildly about the "Durham Dilemma". Francesca approaches him with a deal - she will help him get a retraction printed, if he'll agree to help her find an attorney to take her case, and win her niece back. Edward wants the gossip killed as quickly as possible, and the meddlesome Lady Gordon out of his hair as well, so he agrees. Of course, once he spends more time in her company, he discovers that her case to locate and win custody of her niece is an easy one, and he grows more and more attracted to her every time they meet.

This book had the refreshing change of a heroine who is not a blushing innocent, but rather a widow. And not a widow with a miserable first marriage either, but a kindly husband who she misses greatly. She's actually the more aggressive of the two in the relationship, initiating the first kiss and generally doing her fair share of heavy lifting when it came to the seducing. That doesn't happen too often. It also meant that you don't have to have some sort of tedious variation on the inevitable deflowering scene, but instead two people who have both had sex before, and know that they enjoy it.

I liked that the couple genuinely seemed to like spending time with each other, and after the initial misunderstanding and slightly wrongful first impressions they had of each other, they discovered that they worked very well together in trying to locate Francesca's missing niece. The attraction between them is rather sudden, but the actual development of the relationship is given more time, and unlike in some romances, both characters also reflect on how suddenly they seem to be falling for each other.

Caroline Linden is a new author to me, but I'd seen her favourably reviewed in a few places, and Mrs. Julien read this entire trilogy last year, which suggested that it couldn't be all bad. This book sets up the main arc of the trilogy, each featuring one of the de Lacey sons, and I'm assuming that the complications surrounding the impending scandal and the blackmail and securing of the Ducal title will not be sorted out until the final book - set to feature Charlie, the dissolute rake one. As I enjoyed this one rather a lot, and have already bought all three books, I will proceed with reading about the youngest, hot-head brother next.