A Polar Vortex Romance Round-Up!

Sometimes, the only fitting answer to a Polar Vortex plunge into sub-zero temperatures is a readerly plunge into the steamy world of romance novels. Curled up in bed, listening to the freezing sleet hit the window, I decided to indulge myself in a trio of sumptuous historical romances:

Heir to the Duke by Jane Ashford – This is the first in a new series called “The Duke’s Sons,” in which, I presume, the romantic vicissitudes of the eponymous sons will keep the books coming. This first book centers on Nathaniel Gresham, the heir to the Duke of Langford, but as the narrative makes clear very early on, we can expect a fairly long trail of follow-up titles:

The figure in the glass shook its head. All the sons of the Duke of Langford were tall, handsome, broad-shouldered men with auburn hair and blue eyes. Sebastian was the tallest. Robert the wittiest. Randolph was acknowledged as the handsomest, James the most adventurous, and Alan the smartest. But he was the eldest and the heir.

Heir to the Duke sticks pretty close to standard plot expectations: an arranged marriage, a repressed young woman who’s prettier and more confident than she suspects she is, a sudden, unexpected attraction threatened by a family secret, etc. But Jane Ashford saves it all in the most direct and elemental way possible: by making the chemistry between Nathaniel and his new bride, Lady Violet, irresistible.

The Earl’s Complete Surrender by Sophie Barnes – This is the second book in Sophie Barnes’s “Secrets of Thorncliff Manor” series, and that’s Thorncliff Manor you can spot in the background of the book’s really rather remarkable cover – in the foreground, a beautiful and doe-eyed young man is in the process of being disrobed and ravished by an intent redhead. It’s the exact tableau of a thousand romance novels, only with the roles swapped!

There’s no such swapping in the novel itself, which is in essence a straightforward house-caper: James, the Earl of Woodford, visits beautiful, rambling Thorncliff Manor in order to hunt surreptitiously there for a secret diary whose contents could rock the upper crust of the ton – and also unravel the mystery of his father’s death. Little does he suspect that he’ll encounter at Thorncliff the lovely and impulsive Chloe Heartly, who’s also seeking the same diary for her own reasons – and who notices immediately upon his arrival that the Earl is easy on the eyes:

Stepping aside, they watched as the carriage rolled past them, allowing a brief glimpse of the two men within. One was older and appeared to be extremely well groomed and stylish while the other … Chloe’s heart took flight, skipping along as she met his dark and brooding gaze. He was a young man in his prime, with unfashionably long hair falling across his brow and temple where it blended with the shadow darkening the edge of his jaw. Politely, he dipped his head in greeting as the carriage continued along the road, but his mouth was uninclined to hazard a smile and his eyes remained sober.

Naturally, sparks fly between the two, but the most remarkable thing about The Earl’s Complete Surrender is that it’s not exactly a sequel to its predecessor in the series, Lady Sarah’s Sinful Desires – rather more cleverly, the plots of the two books happen more or less simultaneously and overlap in whose intricacy and humor I didn’t fully catch until I re-read the first book after finishing the second. That kind of cleverness only enhances an already-nifty series.

Marriage Made in Rebellion by Sophia James – The latest US novel by indefatigable New Zealand romancer Sophia James, Marriage Made in Rebellion is the third in her “Penniless Lords” series, this one starring Lucien Howard, the Earl of Ross, who’s a soldier in England’s armies against Napoleon and is caught up in the carnage of the battle of Corunna in Spain in 1809. It’s in the aftermath of the battle that Alexandra Fernandez y Santo Domingo, daughter of a powerful guerrilla leader, finds Lucien. He’s wounded and pinned under his horse, but as with the other tousle-haired heroes in our roundup this time around, nothing can stop him from cutting a fabulous figure:

The wide planes of his cheeks were bruised and his lip was badly cut, but even with the marks of war drawn from one end of him to the other he was beautiful; too beautiful to just die here unheralded and forgotten.

Of course, all safe havens eventually come to an end! The clouds roll in, a persistent sleet begins to fall, and histories of the Hapsburg Empire appear on the front porch and require reading and annotating. And even the contours of the safe haven itself could stand some alteration, since I have to police myself in order to make sure I read more than just historical romances! There are plenty of randy ranchers, coltish cowboys, and boyish billionaires crowding the new romance shelves, after all – we’ll get to some of them next time!