Publisher:
Avon,
Harper Collins
After a wild, scandalous night, Rory Lennox, the Duke of Abshire, finds himself in the bed of his sworn enemy’s wholesome sister, Verity Fitzroy. To protect her honor and keep the peace, he agrees to marriage, but it’s an engagement neither is happy about—until unimaginable occurrences make them view the other in a new, passionate light.
Verity Fitzroy is sent home to Derbyshire after she is found in bed with the Duke of Abshire, her brother’s former best friend, Rory. It doesn’t matter that they’re both fully dressed and so very hungover that they couldn’t have done anything even if they’d wanted to, Verity is ruined. Verity’s brother wants Rory and Verity to marry before any word of the scandal is heard but soon they have other things to worry about. Some diaries cataloging scandalous events perpetrated by the Royal Entourage have been found and they are now being published twice a week!
Verity is determined NOT to marry Rory. She doesn’t want to marry him even though she’s been in love with him since she was 13. She feels that there’s so much about her that’s unmarriageable and when Rory finds out that SHE is the author of those diaries all hell will break loose.
Verity and Rory get closer as they spend more time together and Rory starts to fall in love. He sees Verity though as not many people do and he knows that she will try to save her family from scandal and the diaries by throwing herself on the martyr pyre so that others, including Rory are not blamed.
I had only read a couple of books by Nash before this one – neither, I might add, in this Royal Entourage series – and really liked them. Both Verity’s brother and Rory are part of the Royal Entourage and their cohorts have been running amok for years. All this time Verity has been on the sidelines looking and listening and had documented the happenings of these aristocrats. Verity has no idea how the diaries were stolen, who knew about them enough to actually steal them and how they got into the hands of the newspaper – and she never does find out. She just knows that she must come clean about their author as they are starting to say that Rory was the one that wrote them. Her martyrish attitude really didn’t do a whole lot for me even though I did like Verity for the most part.
Rory was a strange ball of wax. He was supposedly this horrible rake, and I’m sure he had his share of women over the years but he wasn’t rakish in the least. He was apparently this spy for the crown as well but we only get to hear tidbits about that. The more I think about it we really didn’t get to know all that much about Rory during the book except for a couple of incidents in his life. I liked him but I didn’t really know him.
The romance between the hero and heroine was nice but nothing extraordinary, imho. They were good together and they did nice things for each other. This is something I expect from a romance. Unfortunately there just wasn’t that extra umph to it all that would have made it a great read.
There was also a part of the story that had to do with Verity’s abigail that was confusing. Verity HAD to go to London to help her out in some way but we’re never told what that is. It’s all very mysterious and even at the end of the book we don’t figure out what the issue was. It was so obviously sequel or series baiting and I personally found it a bit frustrating.
In the end I found it to be a good read but not without its issues. I did like getting to know that characters and might have to pick up the next in this series as I had really liked Nash’s books that I had read previously. I have to find out what happened with the abigail, right? 🙂
Rating: 3 out of 5
Sophia Nash
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Nice review. I haven't had the chance to read anything from this author yet. Its too bad it wasn't as good as you expected, but I think I would still like to read it sometime soon though.