The Duke's Captive

The Duke's Captive by Adele Ashworth 830

Five years ago Ian Wentworth was held captive in a dungeon for five long weeks by three sisters and while two of them saw justice, another one escaped and he has waited all this time for revenge. Viola Bennington Jones, the widowed Lady Cheshire, has tried to distance herself from her past and from the man she fell in love with years ago and tried to help. She married well, had a son and made a name for herself painting portraits, even though in secret she paints erotic sketches under a pseudonym. When Ian strolls back into her life she is terrified he will reveal who she is but she also can't help but try to find the man she loved so long ago beneath the angry facade. He wants the truth from her and wants to humiliate her in front of the other peers and while he sets out to do this he begins to think he may be going about this all wrong and doubts his own beliefs that Viola is deserving of this harsh plan.

Things become even more complicated when he discovers that her son is actually his and he becomes even more obsessed with getting her to tell him what exactly happened in the dungeon. She does not want to admit to anything as she is scared of what could happen to her son and because she is worried about admitting to feelings for a man who has already admitted that he wants nothing from her but revenge. In a fit of desperation he kidnaps her and takes him to his fishing cottage where he intends to recreate what happened to him but things go awry when his feelings for her come to the surface and they end up making love. The next morning he is forced to run off to see his sister but he intends to make everything better. He has no choice but to confront his feelings when he believes she is going to marry another, and he has to decide if he can forgive her for her actions years ago in order to make a future.

Ian was not exactly completely well rounded in the beginning of the book but as the story progressed he showed himself to be a more nuanced character as he sorted through his feelings for Viola. He went through some tremendous changes throughout the book, but they really did not come fast enough. So much of this book was spent with him being angry at her and he was obsessed with learning "the truth" about what happened to him in the dungeon and it got irritating. It was just as irritating that Viola was so adamant about not telling him the truth and while she did have a reason it's not fun when the big obstacle to the protagonists happiness could be so easily solved. Viola was equally as unexceptional as Ian except I found her erotic paintings to be quite entertaining and wish there had been more of them mentioned in the

book.

Their relationship really seemed to be about making the other upset and humiliating them and the sex between them had this rather angry aspect to it where they both seemed to not want to be happy. I also really wish that more time had been spent with Ian and his son getting to know each other as when there is a secret baby I think it should play a more important role in the story. At first I thought that the book just referred to a lot of things that happened before the book started, but it quickly become obvious that there was a previous book featuring Ian's sister that really went in to depth about his kidnapping and why and how it happened. Almost no real information about what happened is given until the last 20 pages when a big diamond plot was revealed and I did not really appreciate being kept in the dark for so long or feeling as though I should have read another book before this one. As with her last novel I admire Ashworth's way with words and how her novels flow so really well and read very fast.

Rating: While I did somewhat enjoy reading this book, partly because I finished it so soon, there was just too much crazy obsession with pushing each other away.

My Darling Caroline

My Darling Caroline by Adele Ashworth

Caroline Grayson has always been the odd sister out in her family of five girls. She is amazingly intelligent, she has dedicated her life to botany, and despite her vast amount of knowledge and dedication she was turned down from studying with her hero, Sir Albert Markham, because of her sex. When her father discovers that she plans to go to Columbia University to work with other botanists, as she has pretended to be a man, he decides that the best thing to do is to marry her off. He blackmails Brent Ravenscroft, the Earl of Weymerth into marrying her. Brent had been on the continent fighting in the war for months and in his absence his cousin had sold all of his possessions to Caroline's father who only agreed to give them back if he married his daughter. Caroline goes along with the marriage, the whole time knowing that she will eventually get the marriage annulled. Brent is no more excited about the marriage than her, but he is excited that at least he will have no problems creating an heir with his new wife. When she refuses to consummate the marriage he decides to take things slow in their relationship.

Slowly the pieces of their marriage begin to fall into place. The two are both still adamant that they will never admit that they love the other, but it gets easier and easier to see that they are indeed falling in love. Caroline discovers that Brent has an illegitimate daughter and is the first to recognize that Rosalyn is deaf. When Caroline creates a language for Rosalyn to use, Brent is overjoyed that for the first time he is able to communicate and understand his wild child. Although Brent has a terrible history with women as his mother was a selfish witch, he begins to see that Caroline could be different- she could be the women who is worth finally opening his heart. When an evil from Brent's past in France resurfaces with the intent to kill Brent and all he holds dear, Brent has to skillfully maneuver to find a way to save Caroline. Unfortunately it is then that he discovers Caroline's plans to go to Columbia and before she can leave him, he kicks her out of the house without giving her the chance to explain how and why her plans have changed. Without Caroline in his life, Brent realizes that he has made a terrible mistake and knows that he must finally come clean with her about everything- including how much she means to him.

So Caroline is not your typical intelligent female in this book as she is apparently one of those super geniuses that pop up once in a generation or so. Her motives are so well explained that it made it so much more beautiful when she came to the realization that her future lay with Brent and her new family then with the plants and the studying she had previously devoted her life to. Her interactions with Rosalyn, the deaf little girl, were apparently well researched and I could not imagine the patience and skill it would take to communicate with a deaf child before an official sign language was invented. Brent underwent some quite intriguing emotional changes throughout this book as his feelings and his heart began to slowly melt each time Caroline did or said something unexpected that showed how much she cared for him. He certainly said some quite awful things and behaved like a right ass on several occasions, but his apologies were so sincere and heartfelt that I really felt his emotions shining through. I do wish their had been more sex between them, although what few instances in the book were quite hot and good.

What was just truly magical about this book was the way that both Caroline and Brent saw past each others weaknesses and managed to fall in love with each other anyway. Both of them knew their own weaknesses, and because of their feelings for the other, they worked hard to overcome these weaknesses and make themselves a better person. Something I noticed fairly early on in this book was that scenes and conversations are often very long. Towards the end these conversations almost lean towards being information dumps as one character after another has to spill their guts and share all their secrets. From the dinner parties to the sex scenes, everything seems to take twice as many pages as in other romance novels. However she does it so beautifully, and writes so well, that it does not seem as though she's writing too much or that there is an excessive amount of superfluous information. When the book extended on beyond the crazy killer plot I was a little surprised, but the rest of it was just so heartbreakingly wonderful I did not have a problem with it.

Rating: Beautiful book with two beautiful, wonderfully written characters. It did get a tad bit long but that did not both me at all because I just loved the book so much.