This is delightful feel-good historical romance with intelligent dialogue, well drawn characters and a fair sprinkling of humour throughout. Racy, well yes it is a bit but the love stories are well crafted and definitely tell you much about the lives and loves of the aristocracy of Regency times. Fans of Georgette Heyer will thoroughly enjoy these novels.
When the dashing Earl of Ardmore tempts Miss Annabel Essex, the most unattainable of the four beautiful Essex sisters, with the promise of a kiss, she resists, just as she snubs his teasing offers of marriage. For what would she get if she married him? Why, nothing but a faded Scottish title and a hovel in the highlands.
But by some cruel twist of fate Annabel finds herself in a carriage bound for Scotland (the place she abhors) with the penniless Ardmore - and with all the world thinking they're man and wife! To make matters worse Annabel becomes embroiled in a flirtatious game of words with the Earl - in which the prize is a kiss…and the forfeit… A moment of passionate madness with Ardmore and the choice is clear - marriage or disgrace.
Yet when she arrives at the Earl's Scottish Estate - contrary to what she had been lead to believe - she finds the hovel to be a castle and her Earl far from impoverished. And she learns - in the bridal bedchamber and elsewhere - that there is more to marriage than just kissing...
Eloisa James is a professor of English literature, specializing in Shakespeare. She teaches at Fordham University in New York City, and lives in New Jersey. Oxford University Press published her academic book in 2000. She is the daughter of poet Robert Bly (winner of the American Book Award for Poetry) and short story author Carol Bly. Her father is a big fan. Eloisa’s godfather was the poet James Wright, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for his Collected Poems. Among those poems – and one of Wright's most beloved – is a poem written for his goddaughter, Mary Bly (aka Eloisa James).
