FOUR NIGHTS WITH THE DUKE – Eloisa James
Desperate Duchesses Series, Book 8
Avon Books
ISBN: 978-0-06-222391-3
April 2015
Historical Romance

The English Countryside, 1800

Miss Amelia Carrington needs to marry…as soon as possible. According to her brother's will, if she doesn't marry soon, she'll never gain permanent guardianship of her nephew, Charlie, and his estate and all his assets will be under the control of her greedy maternal uncle. Unfortunately, her fiancé jilted her and disappeared a month ago. Her only recourse is to blackmail the man she was madly in love with at fifteen until a love poem she wrote about him was discovered, leading to much embarrassment and hard feelings that exist till this day more than a decade later. It doesn't help that her father, Lord Carrington, a widower, and his mother, the married Duchess of Pindar, carried on a scandalous affair for years. Vander, Mia's first love, is now the duke.

Evander Brody, Duke of Pindar can't believe his neighbor, who hates him, has actually come to him proposing marriage. But after a hot and scathing argument during which she threatens him with a treasonous letter written by his mad father, he finally relents. They come to an agreement riddled with misunderstanding. It was Mia's intention for the marriage to be a short one of convenience after which she would leave him to either get an annulment or a divorce. Vander has other ideas; the one thing he insists on—for he will need an heir—is for her to spend four nights in his bed. So they marry, both interpreting the “four nights” clause differently.

Mia and Vander are sympathetic characters with difficult backgrounds that made them leery of love and loving. But one thing is clear, when they get near each other, temptation is spontaneous. While Mia is determined to avoid it altogether, Vander will allow himself no sentiment to be involved. But he's a man who needs love, and she has a carefully guarded secret…she writes novels.

There is much more to FOUR NIGHTS WITH THE DUKE than the plotline above. Along with the internal conflicts suffered by Mia and Vander, external conflicts arise as well to complicate the whole. Among the well developed characters, major and minor, are Mia's nephew Charlie, Vander's Uncle Chuffy, and a homesick Arabian stallion named Jafeer.

This novel stands very well on its own, but if you haven't read number seven in the Desperate Duchess series (THREE WEEKS WITH LADY X) you might want to add it to your shelf along with this one. In it, Vander is introduced, and its protagonists, Vander's best friend Tobias Dautry and his lady, play a part in this one.

So spend four nights—or one—with the duke and enjoy good reading filled with excitement, humor, and loads of passion. You'll be glad you did.

Jane Bowers