Elizabeth Hoyt, To Desire A Devil

A prisoner of war for seven years following the French and Indian War, Reynaud St. Aubyn finally escapes and returns home to London in 1765. He makes it home only to collapse crashing Beatrice Corning's boring in her mind political tea party until the arrival of the uninvited Reynaud, previously declared dead and her uncle named the earl.

Beatrice has loved Reynaud since she moved in to live with her aunt and uncle and saw his portrait hanging on the wall. She helps him heal physically from a fever and mentally from his incarceration. As she begins to fall in love with the real person beyond just the image, he rhinks of her as his muse, but he needs to know who betrayed their unit at Spinner's Fall and she needs to help him.

This is a super ending to the exciting late eighteenth century Legend of the Four Soldiers saga (see To Taste Temptation, and To Beguile a Beast). The story line is fast-paced as the disheveled ailing hero returns from the "dead" to fall in love but to also identify the traitor who cost them so much. Although the overarching theme is resolved in an intelligent way that remains consistent to the series, TO DESIRE A DEVIL primarily focuses on the relationship between Reynaud and Beatrice

Harriet Klausner