How to Love a Duke in Ten Days - Kerrigan Byrne

Written by Kerrigan Byrne
Read by Derek Perkins
Format: MP3
Bitrate: 64 Kbps
Unabridged

Devil You Know Series, Book 1
Publisher: Macmillan Audio
Release date: August 27, 2019
Duration: 13:04:26

These men are dark, bold, and brave. And there is only one woman who can bring them to their knees…

Famed and brilliant, Lady Alexandra Lane has always known how to look out for to herself. But nobody would ever expect that she has darkness in her past—one that she pays a blackmailer to keep buried. Now, with her family nearing bankruptcy, Alexandra strikes upon a solution: Get married to one of the empire’s most wealthy eligible bachelors. Even if he does have the reputation of a devil.

LOVE TAKES NO PRISONERS

Piers Gedrick Atherton, the Duke of Redmayne, is seeking revenge and the first step is securing a bride. Winning a lady’s hand is not so easy, however, for a man known as the Terror of Torcliff. Then, Alexandra enters his life like a bolt of lightning.

When she proposes marriage, Piers knows that, like him, trouble haunts her footsteps. But her gentleness, sharp wit, independent nature, and incredible beauty awakens every fierce desire within him. He will do whatever it takes to keep her safe in his arms.

A review—Byrne rises admirably to the challenge of creating a hero who maintains dangerous alpha energy even through self-restraint and careful adherence to consent in this slow-burn late-Victorian romance, the starter to the Devil You Know series. Archaeologist Lady Alexandra Lane and her two dearest friends spent their schoolgirl days enjoying gentlemen’s pastimes as the Red Rogues Society. They also share the dark secret of having buried the headmaster, whom Alexandra killed after he raped her. A decade later, Alexandra, bankrupted by blackmail, sees a financial opportunity in marriage to the scarred Terror of Torcliff, Piers Gedrick Atherton, Duke of Redmayne, who wants heirs to thwart his faithless ex-lover and his cousin, who hope to inherit his title and wealth. Alexandra lays out a number of rules around touch so she can feel safe with Piers; he willingly agrees, and also insists on timing their marriage’s consummation to Alexandra’s menstrual cycle in order to ensure his paternity. This slow pacing gives Byrne abundant room to tantalize readers with the couple’s teasing and building passion, and with Alexandra’s unfolding discovery of sex as pleasure.

Not the usual light-hearted romance. This is a fine study of healing after sexual trauma, with tender care and patience as the keys to recovery.