I finished it...and Tracy Anne Warren has indeed outdone herself again. It's a battle-of-the-sexes thing going on here, but essentially it's also a story where, "whoever falls in love first loses."That's not a quote from the book, mind you. I'm just saying.
Anyway, our hero and heroine of the hour is (are) Edward Byron, Duke of Clybourne, and Lady Claire Marsden. These two have been betrothed since Claire was an infant and Edward was about...what, ten years old? It's kind of like the children's movie The Swan Princess, but not really. You know, where Derek is a toddler and meets Odette for the first time and she's supposed to be a newborn but the movie shows her with a full head of hair? Yeah, something like that.
Oh, by the way, before I totally forget, my real name is Claire so it's weird to read my name with Edward, because it makes me think of Robert Pattinson in Twilight and I do NOT like Robert Pattinson like that. Okay well maybe a little, but due to this book, I am grossed out. And because of the cover girl on here being blonde, I'm thinking of Taylor Swift playing the main character again.
Well anyway, Claire grew up with the fanciful notion that since she's been engaged since infancy, she's in love with the soon-to-be Duke of Clybourne. However, many years after Edward becomes the Duke of Clybourne, and approximately 1-2 years after the events of Tempted by His Kiss (Cade & Meg) and Seduced By His Touch (Jack & Grace) Edward decides that to throw off the rest of the marriage-mad debutantes of Society, he's going to honor the arranged marriage that his and Claire's fathers decided upon a long time ago. By present-day, Claire is 21 and Edward is somewhere in his thirties.
Upon their first formal meeting at this time when Edward decides "Yeah, sure, since I have a fiancee, I guess I'll marry her now" Claire is determined to do just the opposite. Why? Because she's in love with him and she's been under the impression that he's not in love with her. This, of course being a romance novel that it is, is a marriage of convenience. We've all seen it before.
So Edward's surprised that Claire doesn't want to marry him, but he figures it's just nerves at the prospect of being married and becoming a Duchess of Clybourne. For Claire's story, it's because when she was 16 years old, she caught Edward with some other chick on a nightly tryst in the garden and Edward insulted her, calling her a child. Of course, despite all that she still loves him but doesn't wanna marry him for being such an asshole and talking shit about her behind her back.
But guess what, Edward's still determined to have her as a wife anyway, and Claire's seeking to defy him enough so that he'll call off the wedding. What she does is pretty much anything that is normally accepted nowadays - smoking cigars with men, racing in public, gambling (this last one even going so far as to cut off her hair and completely disguise herself as a male), running off with a rake who ends up being this complete douchebag of a bad guy, and other such things that it gets her vouchers taken away for Almack's for a while. Oh, and spending a fortune on clothes that not even a new bride would have THAT many...
Well, this ostracizing doesn't last too long because she's the Clybourne Bride, and since she's a duchess-to-be (Kate Middleton, anyone?) she's supposed to be setting an example, but at the same time, everyone still has to forgive her because she's gonna be a goddamn duchess!
Claire believes that Edward hasn't been paying attention to her, but he makes it known that yes, every single one of her ostentatious actions have been noticed by him and damnit, she's still gonna have to marry him regardless.
Eventually they do get married, but she still hasn't heard those certain three words from him, and because of this, she just sticks to a pattern - they fuck, go on with their day separately, then fuck some more at night. Woo!
But Edward's been keeping shit from Claire, business that has to do with the government and a killed man. What she suspects is that Edward's been cheating on her and they've only been married a few short weeks! So she follows him to this nondescript, abandoned mansion and finds him squaring off against a certain female, the same one she saw him with when she was sixteen years old. But this female (I really can't remember her name) happens to be a spy and the person Edward's been looking to arrest. In the midst of all this, Claire gets her ass shot (well, really, her shoulder) AND she's pregnant (which Edward doesn't know) so I don't know how she doesn't go into shock and doesn't have a miscarriage. Really, I'm surprised.
Blah, blah, blah, they're in the carriage, she thinks she's dead and/or dreaming that Edward's saying "OMFG DON'T LEAVE ME CLAIRE, DON'T YOU DARE, I LOVE YOU!" rather frantically, and a bump in the road jerks her awake, especially due to the pain in her shoulder. They make up, and make out, arrive back home and she gets the bullet taken out of her shoulder, blah, blah, blah, HAPPILY EVER AFTER! No miscarriage, yay!
Really though, I still like romance novels, and I like Tracy Warren's work. Don't believe me? Read it for yourself. I'm gonna take another break from her Byron family series (I've got Wicked Delights of the Bridal Bed to read - ebook, apparently) and choose another author to read.
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