From the very second that Nicholas, Marquis of Cardington saw Isobel Fleckney he fell in instant love with her, even though she was only fourteen years old and he was eighteen. He was the perfect gentleman and waited until she turned eighteen and then offered for her hand in marriage. They were going to be married but the night before the wedding Nick gave into his passion for her and tried to make love to her. The passion scared Isobel and she eloped with another man on the eve of what should have been her wedding to Nick. Now, eight years have passed and her husband has committed suicide and Nick is back and is asking Isobel to marry him. Isobel still cares deeply for Nick and he says that he wants a woman and not a giggly girl to marry so she finally agrees to marry him. She hopes that this marriage will work and be more of a marriage than her first one was because unfortunately she has some secrets that she will need to tell Nick about if this marriage will work. Will Nick still love her once he finds out her secrets or will this marriage be as bad as her first one was?

Unfortunately, someone doesn’t want Isobel and Nick’s marriage to work. Someone is blackmailing Isobel for money and a former mistress of Nick’s just doesn’t want to let him go. Will this marriage work with all of these things going against it or will Isobel and Nick finally have the marriage that they both dreamed of finding?

Lynne Connolly became one of my favorite authors with this book. She caught my attention with her first words of the book and she never let it wonder throughout the whole book. As Isobel and Nick began to care for each other I came to care about the characters as much as they did for each other. Ms. Connolly doesn’t just write the words for the story she makes you a part of the story by introducing you to some of the characters that will be around in the other two books in this series. Another thing that this author did was to create one of the most hateful villains that I’ve ever read in a story. The person was a woman and I can only compare her to Cruella De Vil in Disney’s 101 Dalmatians. The author has my admiration for making me fall in love with Isobel and Nick and making me hate this other character at the same time. By the time you finish this Regency, that describes so much of what things were like in that time, I’m sure that you’re going to love it just like I did. I can’t wait for the next story in this series.

Reviewed by: Missy