SAY NO TO THE DUKE

The fourth installment of a Georgian-set but very modern romance series that explores the theme of reputation versus reality.

Lady Boadicea “Betsy” Wilde is the eldest daughter of the Duke of Lindow. Her mother, the duke’s second duchess, ran away with a Prussian count when Betsy was a baby. To ward off even a hint of her mother’s debauchery, Betsy tamps down her wilder impulses and presents a demure and perfectly polished image during her first season. She attracts dozens of suitors, proving the naysayers wrong when Lord Thaddeus Greywick, a future duke with a sterling reputation, proposes. The trouble is that Thaddeus doesn’t set her heart racing like a certain “evil-tongued aristocrat with a dark soul and a penchant for drink.” Lord Jeremy Roden has been hanging out at Lindow Castle for months, recovering from a disastrous military campaign in America and coping with PTSD. He lounges about guiltily in the billiard room, drinking too much whisky, making wisecracks, and generally proving himself unfit for polite society after a terrifying flashback episode in Vauxhall Gardens causes him to black out for an entire week. The bickering twosome cannot resist each other, their banter thrumming with wit, passion, and heart. Jeremy’s frank admissions of lust ratchet up the tension for Betsy. The characters, including the snobbish duke to whom the title refers, his spirited mother, and Betsy’s wise Aunt Knowe, are endearing and memorable. But James’ (Born To Be Wilde, 2018) depiction of recovery from PTSD falls flat, as does the one-dimensional villain whose machinations throw an unnecessary barrier in the way of lovers whose journey to self-revelation and acceptance stands on its own.

A lusty journey back to Lindow Castle with a few dead ends on the way to a deeply felt romance.