Adele Ashworth 'The Duke's Indiscretion'

Total Spoiler Review

Charlotte is the sister of an Earl, but she is also an extremely talented opera singer. Colin is the Duke of Newark, and he's been madly infatuated with the opera singer Lottie English for three years. She's managed to elude his attempts to meet her at the theater twice, but he comes up with the idea to sneak back stage during a performance. Oh finally, a truly smart hero. Once Lottie finds out how much he wants her, she decides to approach him as Charlotte and propose marriage because she needs money to be able to tour Europe singing opera.

These two marry despite Charlotte's ownership of a priceless piece of music that she could have sold to finance her singing and the rest of her life, for that matter. What a relief to have a smart logical heroine. The real trouble begins on the wedding night. Colin buys her a 'costume' lingerie thingy with super high heels to match. He then proceeds to mistake her attempts to dislodge him (She's sitting on his lap. How is she unable to dislodge him? But I digress) for extreme throws of passion and her cries for climax. Hmmm.

Truthfully this in and of itself would not have put me off of this book entirely. But she tells him the next morning how painful it was, he gets drunk (I assume feeling guilty) but he has to confront her again and ask if she climaxed. She further clarifies how yucky this was for her. Okay, I'm thinking from his "I am a god damned idiot." that he's now got the picture. So of course, a couple days later he pins her in a carriage, kisses her senseless, demands that she admit she wants him or he will make love to her right there and then. (They are now stopped in front of their home and he's slammed the door on the door-opening servant.) Hmm. Colin talks to his friends who tell him he's a total loser, he put a get-up on a virgin, hello! This is yet another revelation to him so he finally decides he needs to seduce her.

You get the picture. But what astounds me is the author continues to have this guy pursue his seduction with commands and coercive physical measures. Um, is this supposed to be sexy? And if that's not enough, after he's gotten her to the magical climax, he thinks to himself, maybe coming on to another woman would move this along a little. I'm soooo in love with this guy. And he gets all excited about telling her about his secret life as a master forger but decides he'll wait to tell her that he does it for the government until she truly trusts him by letting him penetrate her. Wow.

Okay, fine, I didn't like the book. Not only did I not like either character but their development was inconsistent on top of it all. And the plot feels completely contrived because of the lack of logic to her needing to marry him, etc. Skip it.

Historical Romance 2007: 1 out of 5 dastardly girl friends.

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