Up All Night with a Good Duke
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- USD 8.99
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- USD 8.99
Publisher Description
"I can think of the perfect way to keep you occupied and your mind diverted," she murmured. "Come to my room. If you're not too tired…"
Lust flashed in his gaze and then he caught her face between his hands and kissed her. "For you, my beautiful Artemis, I'd stay up all night."
Artemis Jones—"respectable" finishing-school teacher by day and Gothic romance writer by night—has never lost sight of her real dream: to open her own academic ladies' college. When Artemis is unexpectedly called upon by a dear friend, a fellow Byronic Book Club member, to navigate her first London Season, she comes at once. Who knows, perhaps she can court the interest of a wealthy patron for her school. As long as she can avoid her high-handed aunt's schemes to marry her off.
Dominic Winters, the widowed Duke of Dartmoor, needs a wife—someone who will provide him with an heir and help him to manage his spitfire adolescent daughter. The problem is, Society has dubbed him "The Dastardly Duke." Rumors are rife that he murdered his mad wife so his choices for a suitable bride are limited. But then he meets the ravishing and passionate Artemis Jones who might just be everything he needs.
“The perfect blend of sexiness and humor… Amy Rose Bennett has created a lush, vibrant love story, her characters sharing a fabulous sensual chemistry that fairly scorches the page.”—Christina Britton, award-winning author
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Bennett (How to Catch a Devilish Duke) underwhelms in the Victorian romance that launches her Byronic Book Club series. The inconsistently characterized heroine, Artemis Jones, teaches at a finishing school by day and writes salacious Gothic romances by night. She views both gigs as stepping stones to her dream of opening a women's college. However, when Artemis's shy friend Lucy is forced by her father into looking for a husband, Artemis quits her job to return to the London society she's shunned in support of Lucy. She falls in love at first sight with the Byronic hero of her dreams: Dominic Winters, "the Dastardly Duke of Dartmoor," whom society believes to have murdered his wife as the result of a smear campaign by his wife's brother, the cartoonishly villainous Guy de Burgh—who, coincidentally, is also the scoundrel who seduced Artemis during her first season. Artemis hatches a bizarre plot to avoid marriage by ruining her reputation, a half-baked scheme that ends with her in an engagement-of-convenience to Dominic, who wants Artemis's help managing his rebellious daughter. There are some sizzling sex scenes along the way, but the story is loaded with subplots that go nowhere and illogical character beats. It's a shoddily constructed, broadly drawn melodrama.
