For this reckless widow, love is the most dangerous game of all.
Caroline, Lady Beaumont, arrives in London seeking excitement after ten dreary years of marriage and an even drearier year of mourning. That means conquering society, dancing like there’s no tomorrow, and taking a lover to provide passion without promises. Promises, in this dashing widow’s dictionary, equal prison. So what is an adventurous lady to do when she loses her heart to a notorious rake who, for the first time in his life, wants forever?
Devilish Silas Nash, Viscount Stone is in love at last with a beautiful, headstrong widow bent on playing the field. Worse, she’s enlisted his help to set her up with his disreputable best friend. No red-blooded man takes such a challenge lying down, and Silas schemes to seduce his darling into his arms, warm, willing and besotted. But will his passionate plots come undone against a woman determined to act the mistress, but never the wife?
The Seduction of Lord Stone, by Anne Campbell
This ended up being something of a weird read for me. The book made a fantastic first impression, introducing Caroline and her two friends, also widows, as Caroline nears the end of her year of mourning for her husband. She’s come to London in order to live her life to the fullest once she’s no longer bound by the strict rules of mourning and she resolved to make the most of it. After all, it’s her first taste of freedom after a lifetime spent living under a man’s thumb — first her father’s, then her husband’s.
The premise was intriguing and Caroline and her fellow widows are reasonably developed as characters within the first chapter. Each with a different perspective on marriage, each with a different story to tell, for all that we really only learn Caroline’s. When Caroline makes her entrance into society by hosting a ball (and we’ll leave aside a discussion of whether she would have been expected to stay in half-mourning for any time longer for those better versed in the etiquette than I am), she considers herself officially on the hunt for her first foray into the world of the physical pleasures that a wealthy widow can explore.
Of course, none of this sits well with Silas, who is the brother of one of Caroline’s fellow widows. He’s been in love with her since meeting her at one of his sister’s gatherings months back and has carefully plotted his campaign to woo her, starting by being a friend. The only problem is he’s interested in marriage, while Caroline sees that institution as nothing more than a jail sentence. After nearly scaring her off with his reaction to the news, he scrambles to maintain their friendship by offering to provide her with insights into prospective lovers, all while plotting to try and dissuade her from taking anyone other than him to his bed. Difficult, when her primary candidate is one of his best friends.
The plot from there isn’t anything out of the ordinary, but well executed and with some excellent dialog. The sexual tension between the hero and heroine is well done. In fact, I was strongly enjoying the book …when it just ended. Ended with a temporary resolution but not the happily ever after that we, as romance readers, would expect from a novel of this sort. (And I use the term novel here loosely, as based on the length of the book this is more like a novella at best.) There’s a promise that their story continues in the next book in the series, for all that this one supposedly focuses on a different hero and heroine (judging from the title) but it feels a little bit like an attempt to cheat the reader into continuing the series by forcing a cliffhanger where none is needed.
It’s frustrating too, because the writing and story was well done. I would have happily bought the next book in the series without this, but now I feel like to do so would be rewarding something I’m not comfortable with. Your mileage may vary, but I still need to think about it. Either way, reader beware that while the writing and story are good, the resolution is much more a cliffhanger than one would expect from a historical romance novel.