BETWEEN THE DUKE AND THE DEEP BLUE SEA – Sophia Nash
Royal Entourage Series , Book 1
Avon Books
ISBN: 978-0-06-202232-5
March 2012
Historical Romance

St. Michael's Mount, Cornwall – 1800's

Alex Barclay, now the ninth Duke of Kress, has just gotten into a mess of trouble along with all his various and assorted friends, bringing down the ire of Prinny, the Prince Regent of England.  Alex and his friends, including His Graces the Dukes of Candover , Sussex , Wright and Middlesex, are all called into Prinny's bedchamber.  Who knows where the Dukes of Norwich, Barry and Abshire are, but one thing is certain—their actions last night have brought much embarrassment to the Prince Regent, along with the newspapers reporting that their licentious activities deserve some French lessons concerning aristocratic overindulgence (the guillotine, perhaps?)  The prince sends them all to Cornwall under Kress's guidance, with orders to return in a month's time married and respectable.  Oh, did I mention the Duke of Candover missed his own wedding that morning after his bride waited ninety minutes?  Ahem, well, the doings of all these men and the absinthe they blame for their actions the night before could cost all of them their bachelorhood, unless the London citizens also demand their necks.

Roxanne Vanderhaven, wife of the Earl of Paxton, finds herself in a bit of trouble after chasing her dog Eddie toward a cliff after a storm.  Over the side she went, and now she is clinging to the face of the cliff by a prickly branch.  Her husband said he was coming back with help or a rope, but surely it's been over an hour when it comes to her, her husband wasn't coming back for her !  When the Duke of Kress hears Eddie barking and stops to look at the coast for a landmark, Eddie barks and won't let him remount and leads him to the edge of a cliff where he sees a woman clinging to the cliff face.  After Roxanne is saved, she goes with him to St. Michael's Mount and poses as his third cousin four times removed, or is it his fourth cousin, three times removed? Sometimes it's hard to remember.  Roxanne takes the name Tatiana or Harriet, they can't quite choose which name sounds better, and his blind maiden aunt Meme takes her under her wing.  Roxanne thought her marriage was adequate, despite the burden of being a commoner; her father was the richest copper and tin miner in the south of England .  Now she is living and hiding out with a large party of men and women looking to soothe the Prince Regent and trying to decide what her future is to be after she hears her husband is having her funeral in several days.  She just has to find where her father told her he hid money for her before he died in case she ever needed it.  Now all she can look forward to is life as the dead wife of her husband, hiding out somewhere for the rest of her life lest she be found out.

While Roxanne spends time with the group at the house party trying to hide from the neighborhood and watching the courting antics of the various and sundry men and women, she finds some sympathetic women who believe her story of being Kress's cousin, and he even goes to her "funeral" and tries vainly to stop taunting her husband about his “perfect” wife.  Kress hates the country, but Roxanne is a bright light in his life and starts to help him see things in a different way. He slowly becomes interested in Prinny's idea of remodeling The Mount, a historical part of England .  But, the bad thing is, can a Duke have a relationship with a “married” dead woman?  (Kind of tricky, even in these days, let alone back then.)  Then something happens that threatens the whole relationship and the lives of Roxanne and Kress.

Sophia Nash has written a very exciting and unique story of what happens when you disturb the powers that be and put them in a bad light.  Ms. Nash started off writing from Kress's point of view, but from afar, of what happened the night before and what is happening that morning. Roxanne definitely tells her story from her point of view, but rather from the point of all the mistakes she made and the way she ignored her husband's selfish ways.  She also looks back at her life and marriage and wonders why things went as they did, and what course her future life will take her, as she is now a wife who dares not show her face.  Very interesting writing and reflections by Kress and Roxanne, and you will totally smile as Kress helps her get some revenge.

Secondary characters fill the pages with the English aristocracy and their rules and life, their foibles, and especially the women's hunt for a husband that must proceed in a set order.  Along with all the dukes expelled by Prinny, there is Roxanne's husband, Lawrence Vanderhaven, who left his wife to die clinging on the side of a cliff and his fake sadness at losing her.  John Goldsmith is a young man in charge of the Mount's chickens, and Dickie Jones worked with her father and loved her almost as much as he did.  There are other splendid characters such as all the women at the house party, most of them offering solid friendship to Roxanne.

BETWEEN THE DUKE AND THE DEEP BLUE SEA shows the debauched side of ole England when Prinny was in power and drunken hi-jinks were common…hmmm, sounds modern, doesn't it?  How Kress protects Roxanne until she can decide what she wants out of the rest of her life is something he is definitely not used to doing; he believes in protecting his heart and knows whatever is good will soon be taken from him.  You can find out what happened to the Duke of Norwich on that infamous night in the second book in the Royal Entourage series , THE ART OF DUKE HUNTING (April 2012).  Just let me say the last fifteen Dukes of Norwich have been cursed to die by means of fowl, usually ducks.  I'm sure it will be just as much of a hoot as BETWEEN THE DUKE AND THE DEEP BLUE SEA, and you definitely don't want to miss the first book in the series this month.

Carolyn Crisher