Alexander Sinclair, the Fourth Earl of Falmouth, has a reputation for revelling in vice. But his taste for wine, women and dice is only a fraction of the dangerous truth, for the Earl is the force behind a powerful gang, smuggling contraband between France and Cornwall.
Never afraid to get his hands dirty and with an abiding love of living recklessly, Alex leads many of these runs himself, until one fateful night when the Revenue appear. Forced to sail into a violent storm, the ship is lost and Alex is washed ashore, barely alive, close to the French port of Roscoff.
Innocent beauty, Célestine Lavelle, has lost everything. The daughter of a noble French family forced to flee during the Revolution, she has been forced to work in the kitchens of the local whore house, where her future is shrouded in sin. Desperate and completely alone, the discovery of a half drowned English smuggler on the shore will lead her heart in directions she never dreamed of.
Determined to save his beguiling rescuer, Alex plans that her future should be full of everything that is good and honourable, but will the temptation to take her as his own be too hard to resist?
The Earl’s Temptation, by Emma V. Leech
I will start this review by saying that this is the second book of a series and I read it without having read the first book. In retrospect this probably was not the best plan, as Alexander is the brother of the hero from the first book and (from what I can gather in the text) plays a substantial role in it. Because of this, I was left with the feeling that there was a lot of backstory I was missing, something that definitely influenced my opinion of the book.
That bit of framing out of the way, onto the review! Alexander Sinclair is the Fourth Earl of Falmouth but also runs a smuggling operation in Cornwall, bringing back luxuries from France. During one of the nighttime runs, they are surprised by the Revenue and he is forced to sail into a storm shorthanded. His ship is wrecked and he is the sole survivor, washing up on the beach near the port of Roscoff. There he is found by our heroine, Celeste (as she is called for the majority of the book).
The daughter of a noble French family, Celeste’s life has been marked by tragedy. The family fled during the Revolution but her father was eventually killed and her mother committed suicide after her father’s death. Her only claim to her heritage lies in the papers she has documenting her heritage and those don’t put food in her belly or a roof over her head. As such, she works as a maid in the local brothel, where the Madam has been trying to coerce her into selling her body. (Given that we are told that the Madam is more than willing to drug recalcitrant girls with laudanum, her patience with Celeste’s refusal is …impressive.) Despite all this tragedy, Celeste does not want to see anyone else die and so brings Alexander back to her room, hiding him from the Madam, and nurses him through the chill that follows.
When Celeste overhears the Madam agreeing to sell her virginity to a cruel merchant, she knows she can no longer stay in Roscoe. Alexander, who is captivated by her beauty and wracked with guilt over what he believes she is doing to put a roof over his head, refuses to take her virginity but instead insists that she come with him. The pair makes their way to his family’s estate in France, stopping along the way at the chateau that belonged to Celeste’s family. Despite the sexual tension between them, Alexander refuses to touch her, believing she deserves better than he can offer. Upon meeting his family, she is shocked to discover that he is an earl. Meanwhile, it’s apparent to his family that Alexander has fallen in love with Celeste but he continues to deny it, holding steadfast to his belief that she deserves more.
Not even an attempt to kidnap Celeste can shake him from this belief, and she is sent off to live with his aunts in preparation for her debut. There, she tries to turn herself into the kind of English beauty she believes Alexander wants, while writing to him of all the men who come by to visit — part of the benevolent conspiracy his family endorses. Upon her debut, she makes it a point to flirt with the rogues and rakes and Alexander realizes that he cannot let her slip out of his reach. Of course, there are still one or two twists to be resolved.
Overall, I enjoyed it but it wasn’t a stand-out read or a shining example of the genre. (That’s fine, not every book can be.) It was solid, even if there was a reasonable amount of repetition in the angst of why Alexander felt he couldn’t be with Celeste. The ending also felt like it dragged on longer than was necessary, but it was a happy ending. However, my biggest complaint is probably that we are told repeatedly that he doesn’t feel good enough to be with her and that he is an awful person without seeing a lot of evidence for why he feels this way. This is something that might have been explained in the previous book, but I would hope for at least some level of that exposition or backstory to have made its way into this one.