Overall:4.5 rounded to ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Readability: 📖📖📖📖
Feels: 🦋🦋🦋🦋
Emotional Depth: 💔💔💔💔
Sexual Tension: ⚡⚡⚡⚡
Romance: 💞💞💞💞
Sensuality: 💋💋💋💋
Sex Scene Length: 🍑🍑🍑
Steam Scale (Number of Sex Scenes): 🔥🔥🔥
Humor: Yes
Perspective: Third person from both hero and heroine
More character focused or plot focused? character
How did the speed of the story feel? medium
When mains are first on page together: Very soon in, about 4% (after a brief set up for the hero’s mistress situation)
Cliffhanger: No, this ends with a happily ever after
Epilogue: Yes, 7 months later
Format: voluntarily read an advanced reader copy through NetGalley

Should I read in order?
I picked this one up alone and thought it was very readable alone. The characters from book 1, Basingstoke and Francesca are characters in this one and do have some page time so ideally for all character background reading in order would be pleasant. (much of the first half of the story takes place at Basingtoke’s house so there is frequent interaction)

Basic plot:
Prue takes the opportunity to blackmail the Duke of Montford when it falls into her lap. He did scheme to take over a thousand pounds from her father and cut her season short after all..

Give this a try if you want:
- Regency (1818)
- house party-ish setting for much of the book (in Kent)
- close proximity
- heroine blackmails the hero
- enemies to lovers – the hero won a large wager against the heroine’s father
- hero is a bit possessive/jealous
- medium steam – 3 full scenes

Ages:
- hero is 28, didn’t see heroine mentioned but would guess early 20s?

First line:
Jasper St. Vincent, the Duke of Montford, had a talent for sin.

My thoughts:
I have read quite a few Anna Bradley books and have loved a lot of them. I wasn’t a big fan of her mystery series because I just prefer character driven romance and I was so very excited that she came back to that with this book.

I adore Bradley’s writing. She just wraps me up in swoony lines and her characters can get all angsty and emotional and pull at my heart and I found that with this novel. So many scenes I just loved, and thought there was some great humor here too.

I do think there’s some things going on in this plot that some others might find tiring – the evil mistress plot for one (which, thankfully, is not a huge part). And the hero borders on a bit of a jerk in some scenes.

I have such a soft spot for the name Jasper. I was already in love with him when I heard his name! I loved Jasper – I loved how he fell for Prue and just started acting a fool for her. I eat that UP! And I was so engaged with his heartbreak towards the end. Jasper has my heart!

Prue was a great heroine too. I liked how spunky she was and how she was raised to be fairly independent. But there’s so much she doesn’t know, especially about love and passion and the way she falls for Jasper was lovely.

I love Bradley’s steam. She’s usually on the lower end (and here the scenes aren’t super long) but there’s something there, emotionally, that just makes her scenes feel so much stronger to me. I have missed reading her books and now I want to go back and read all that I’ve missed! (Like book 1 of this series)

And I do have a shelf for ‘feisty older lady’ for those interfering matchmaking grandmotherly figures, but I found that in a grandfather here and just loved it! I really enjoy when the grandparents are trying to hook up the grandkids 😂

Endearments

The hero calls the heroine ‘sweetheart’. 

Quotes/spoiler-y thoughts:Any mistakes/typos are my own

This is something I’ve always loved about Bradley’s writing. She makes these things so powerful, so forbidden.

The fire had died down some time ago, but she’d left the study door open behind her when she entered, and as he came forward, a dim shaft of light from the hallway fell over his face.
Another gasp tried to tear itself loose from her chest, but this one caught in her throat, lodging there as he sauntered toward her.
The coat, cravat, and waistcoat he’d been wearing last night were nowhere to be seen. He was in his shirtsleeves, the wide-open neck of his white linen shirt exposing the hollow of his throat, a smattering of crisp dark hair peeking out from the layers of loose linen. His head was a mess of tousled dark waves, and the hint of a beard shadowed his jaw and neck.
“Why...what are you doing here?” That throaty, breathless murmur wasn’t her voice, was it?
---
“For God’s sake, Basingtoke, you can’t truly be considering a match between Miss Thorne and Luttress? Are you mad?” Why, Miss Thorne would eat the poor vicar for breakfast, luncheon, and dinner. She’d flay him alive with that sharp tongue of hers, fricassee him, then bake him into a pie and swallow him whole. “I can’t think of any gentleman less suited to Miss Thorne than some puffed-up vicar.”
---
“May I see the earrings?”
She blinked. “See them? I didn’t bring them with me, Your Grace.”
“No? Whyever not? They’re rather an integral part of your blackmail plot.”
“It’s not a …” she trailed off, drawing in a deep breath. “If I’d brought them, what would have stopped you from simply taking them from me?”
“What stops me from doing whatever I like with you now?”
---
If he’d been in her place, he’d have blackmailed him, too. Except he’d refused her, hadn’t he? He’d sent her away, thinking himself very ill-used, and now she’d be obliged to marry a smug, conceited, self-righteous fusspot of a vicar!
Damnation, but this was a disaster. He must see her at once and tell her he’d changed his mind, and would be perfectly delighted to be blackmailed, after all.
---
But he didn’t look snarly now. A less perceptive lady might even make the mistake of thinking him harmless. His hair was tousled, as if he’d been dragging his fingers through it, and his cravat was undone. The long golds of linen hung limply around his neck, leaving the smooth, olive skin of his throat bare.
---
“No!” He tore his gaze away from the maddening wisps of her loose hair, the firelight gleaming on the golden strands and flickering over the long, slender line of her neck. He wouldn’t get another chance to undo the mess he’d made with that wager with her father, so he’d simply have to keep his gaze averted from that...that mockery of a gown.
Especially that fiendish little bow tied under her bosom.
---
Basingstoke held up a hand, and she trailed off in into silence. A good thing, too, because the next world about to fall from her lips was “arse.”
“I don’t see why Miss Thorne can’t join us. She regularly shoots with her father at home, and knows the rigors involved. She’s a crack shot, too, Montford. You should see - “
“No, I shouldn’t see, and I won’t, because she isn’t coming with us.”
Montford cross his arms over his chest, his dark green frock coat pulling tight at his wide shoulders.
And here it came again, the word “arse,” burbling up in her throat, clawing its way into her mouth -
---
A soft laugh floated toward her from the darkness. “I didn’t come for Basingstoke, Miss Thorne. I came for you.”
---
“I beg your pardon, Your Grace, but I don’t see what this has to do with me.” Nor did she wish to, by the look of him. He was polite enough, but there was something dark underlying his calm, as if he were holding onto his temper by the slimmest thread.
“You may beg all you like, Miss Thorne, but I’m afraid it’s much too late for that. You’ve made your bed, and now you’ll be obliged to lie in it. Or perhaps I should say, we’ll both be obliged to lie in it, together.”
Lie in bed, together? For one wild moment, an image flashed behind her eyelids. The Duke of Montford as he’d been in the painting, every inch of his body on glorious display, from his smooth, olive skin to the crisp, dark hair dusting his chest, his flat, taut belly…
---
“Now, if you’ll pardon me, Your Grace-”
“Not quite yet, Prue.” He sauntered toward her, his eyes dark and his lips pressed into a tight line. Oh, he was so angry, but she stood her ground as he got closer and closer, pressing her into the doorway, his hands coming up on either side of her face, caging her in. “Perhaps I haven’t made myself clear.”

When Jasper is losing his mind for Prue and traumatizes her poor maid

He pressed his ear to the door, waiting for the thud of angry footsteps approaching, but there was nothing but a faint shuffling sound, and the door remained firmly closed.
“I know you’re in there, Prue. I can hear you moving about. Come out of there at once and give me a chance to seduce you, damn -”
“Jasper? For pity’s sake, what in the world are you shouting about? I could hear you all the way from the entryway!”

 

Content warnings: These should be taken as a minimum of what to expect. It’s very possible I have missed some.

- mention of parental death
- toxic mistress
- hunting/shooting of guns and a gunshot accident/wound

Locations of kisses/intimate scenes:

Safe sex: 

No, but they are married 

Hows the consent? 

  It’s good – he asks at some points and otherwise I believe it’s implied 

38% - brief mention of hero self pleasure
45% - kiss
62% - 🔥 kisses, missionary (V loss for heroine)

Need to be careful with her...go slowly...a proper gentleman, not a ravening animal…
But he was losing the battle, his control slipping, his chest heaving with his panting breaths as he toyed with the loose neckline of her night rail. His hands shook as he dragged it lower, trailing his lips over her neck, then burying his mouth in the warm, fragrant hollow of her throat, tasting the pulse that fluttered wildly under the soft skin there.

75% - 🔥 kisses, fingering/oral for her
He slid his hands down her body, pausing to squeeze her waist before catching a handful of her shift in his fist. He dragged it up, over the long, slender line of her legs and inched his fingers underneath it, his knuckles brushing against her thigh, his palm hot against the sweet curve of her belly.

96% - 🔥 hand job for him (incomplete), missionary

He growled against her damp flesh, his hand creeping under the flimsy linen of her shift and up her thigh, then he shifted to kneel between her knees, spreading her wider with a gentle nudge of his hips.
“Want you, Prue.”