Melanie George, Naughty or Nice

Naughty or Nice

Melanie George

Pocket, Dec 2004, $6.99, 352 pp.

ISBN: 0743442741

After two governesses quit because his wild ward Lady Francine FitzHugh drove them away, Lucien Kendall decides he will take a firm hand with the pest and marry her off immediately so he can go back convincing the Ton he is a hedonist. Instead, Lucien uses pleasure-seeking as a ploy to hide his real self, a tortured soul worried that he is just like his father and knowing what happened to George, his ward's brother.

Her grandmother died last year and her brother soon after, but Fancy does everything to save her home. Now her guardian, George's commanding officer, interferes with her plans to save her beloved Moor's End. However, when Lucien arrives to admonish Fancy, the two are stunned as an immediate attraction erupts. Soon love blossoms, but he has dark secrets that once she learns them might turn her love to hate.

The second The Pleasure Seekers Club Regency romance is a fine tale because of the interesting Lucien who has guilty feelings involving George and an abusive father to overcome; he is the key to the tale. Like Fancy, readers slowly learn his dark secrets that he hides by pretending to be a card carrying pleasure seeker (kind of like reaction formation). Fancy is an intrepid heroine fighting to save her home and subsequently her beloved. Though the action is limited, this character-driven historical will pleasure fans of nineteenth-century relationship dramas starring a traumatized protagonist.

Harriet Klausner