TBR Day. Desired / Nicola Cornick. 2011


Desired is Nicola Cornick's 5th book in her 6-book series "Scandalous Women of the Ton." I have enjoyed all of the entries in the series, including this one, for their unusual heroines, settings, or situations. Desired is the story of Tess, Lady Darant, a thrice-widowed woman with a huge fortune and a reputation of licentious and careless behavior. If she is received anywhere respectable it is more likely because of her sisters Joanna (book 1) and Merryn (book 3). Owen Purchase, Viscount Rothbury, is a former American who inherited the title and somewhat run-down estates from a distant cousin. He is a good friend of her sisters' husbands.

We learn at the book's opening that Tess is really not the woman painted by her reputation. She was horribly abused by her second husband and she hides her pain behind a carefully constructed facade. She has no desire to marry again and spends her time secretly aiding radical causes and drawing political cartoons. Owen is working for the government trying to find the source behind the cartoons and it doesn't take him long to figure out that it's Tess. Meanwhile Tess is confronted by a blackmailer who wants to use Tess's reputation against her so he can marry her 16-year old stepdaughter. She realizes that she needs a respectable marriage to protect her stepdaughter from the blackmailer. Afraid of any kind of physical intimacy, she needs a husband who won't expect to sleep with her. She had heard a comment indicating that Owen had suffered an injury rendering him impotent, so she goes to him and proposes marriage.

Of course, Owen had suffered no such injury, but he's not aware of Tess's thinking. He is intrigued by her, attracted to her, and could certainly use her fortune to restore the estates he's inherited. He can also protect her from the government's investigation and makes her promise to stop drawing the cartoons. He agrees to marry her and they begin to spend some time getting to know one another. Owen sees there's more to Tess than he expected, but he also sees that she's afraid of intimacy and it doesn't take long to figure out why. As Tess begins to trust Owen with her secrets and her past, she is also able to begin to trust him physically.

While this wasn't my favorite entry in the series (I especially liked #1 and #4), I thought this was a solid, well-done story. It was emotional in spots and I liked the way Owen and Tess gradually get to know and trust one another. Nothing was instant, nor was it drawn out too long. Cornick is good at dropping in lots of period details and describing parts of London that don't appear in a typical Regency. I liked it and am looking forward to reading the 6th and final book of the series, Forbidden, which features a ladies maid as heroine!

Comments

  1. WendyMarch 24, 2013 at 9:11 PM

    OMG - she wrote a ladies maid heroine?!?! How did I not know this? I know I've got the first couple of books in this series in my TBR - off to collect the others.....

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. PhylMarch 24, 2013 at 9:42 PM

      I have Forbidden. It sounds fun. Of course, now I just need to find time to read it! I hope you'll enjoy them, too.

      Delete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

I think I have ADD

Image
I'm one of those people who constantly moves from project to project. I do finish things, but midway through one project I'll stop and pull out fabric to start another one. Or something will come up that makes me start in on something else--a challenge, a class, a need to make a gift, or a new fabric purchase. All of those things change my focus. I don't want to admit how many UFOs (UnFinished Objects) I have here, but if I were totally honest, it's probably at least a dozen. Here are 3 I started this summer. And I'm not including the one I started the other night because I couldn't get a decent picture of it. This first one is from a class I took in June with 2 friends. I still have 4 more flowers to add to it. This is funky and fun, but it's large and appliqueing down the flowers is awkward at times. A while back I posted a picture of some flower blocks that I'm doing as part of an exchange with the same 2 friends. I had another set of blocks to finis
Read more

57, 3, 15

Image
57 years. 3 months. 15 days. That's how old my sister was when she died on December 30, 2015. Char spent four and a half years in a tug of war with cancer. For a while there she seemed to be in total control. But that insidious disease came back and this time would not let up. Here's the kicker. She had uterine cancer, just like me. Only hers was Stage 4 when they found it. Mine barely qualified as Stage 1. Life is often unfair, but that seemed the cruelest irony of all. As I wept that she was dying, she wept because I was not. It's taken me a long time to process this and to be willing to talk openly about it. Some of you reading this have been very open with your own struggles with health, grief, death, and dying. I've wanted to be, but I think I needed for the worst of it to be over first. Every time I tried to write about it, I'd sit paralyzed at the keyboard. I just wasn't ready I guess. Char decided to suspend further treatment last August. It wa
Read more

TBR Day. Conor's Way / Laura Lee Guhrke. 1996

Image
Back in the early 2000's, when I began lurking at the old AAR  boards, I heard talk of this book. And according to Amazon, I apparently broke down and purchased a copy for myself via Marketplace in 2004 for a "mere" $4.75. Today a used print copy goes for about $25. I don't know why I waited so long to read it. I'd keep seeing references to how good it is, especially from KristieJ who has been nagging our TBR hostess to read it forever. I think I was saving it for a day when I knew I needed to read a really good book. But when I saw that this month's theme was "Recommended Read" it was clear that this was the book I had to read. I was really, really stupid to wait 8 years to read this. Frankly, I should just end this review with that statement. I am writing this Tuesday evening. Earlier today I saw on Twitter that at least 2 other TBR participants are reviewing this for today as well. And they'll probably do a better job at it than me. B
Read more