About the Book:

A gentleman in search of redemption finds a lady looking for sin. Will honor or temptation prevail? Find out in this sensual and heart-melting take on Beauty and the Beast…

The Beast
Once London’s reigning debutante, Lady Beatrice Wodehouse is poised for a life of happiness when an accident shatters her dreams. Renamed Lady Beastly by vicious gossips, she flees loss and betrayal, escaping to the countryside. There, she finds solace in anonymity and discovers new purpose, turning her estate into a haven for society’s outcasts. Yet a shard of her old dream remains: she yearns for a taste of forbidden passion…

The Beauty
Once London’s most feckless rake, Wickham Murray has fought to redeem his honor and prove that he is more than a shallow Adonis. Now a railway industrialist, he’s as renowned for his prowess in the boardroom as in the bedchamber. His latest venture will be the greatest success of his career: the only obstacle is a stubborn country spinster who refuses to sell him her land. On his way to negotiate with her, he stops at a masquerade, where an encounter with a masked lady changes everything he thought he knew about desire…

Their Timeless Tale
Negotiations go from heated to scorching as Bea and Wick discover that they are not only opponents in business but lovers bonded by a night of ecstasy that neither can forget. As they wrestle with all-consuming passion and blossoming love, they must also contend with deadly attacks from a mysterious foe. In order to survive, they will have to unravel dark secrets…and trust the truth of their own hearts.

The Duke Redemption is the 4th book in the Game of Dukes series, which features hot, sexy romance, fun and feel-good happily ever afters, and intriguing mystery and adventure. This book can be enjoyed as a stand-alone novel and is also part of a series.

Click on title below for direct Amazon buy link:                                                        The Duke Redemption (Game of Dukes Book 4)

My Review:

Lady Beatrice Wodehouse is on top of the world.  At seventeen, she’s having a successful debut season, and, in fact, has just become engaged to a handsome young duke.  A terrible accident happens, one that leaves Bea with facial scars, and also affects her very future.  Bea realizes that her fiancé is now regretting their engagement, so she releases him.  Society treats her differently, and her own family is in turmoil over her.  Eventually her parents die, and she becomes estranged from her brother, choosing to use her fortune to purchase a country estate, and to live on her own.  Camden Manor is a haven not only for Bea, but for the strays and outcasts she welcomes.  The years pass, and Bea is now approaching her twenty-fifth birthday.  Though she’s content with her life, she longs for just one taste of passion.  She attends a local masked assembly, where it’s rumored that illicit encounters are the norm, determined to have a night to remember forever.

Wickham Murray handles negotiations for the Great London Northern Railway, and he’s in town to persuade the mysterious spinster, “Beatrice Brown,” to sell him her property.  Camden Manor and the surrounding land is the only remaining parcel he needs, and Miss Brown has already refused several very generous offers.  Wick is also attending the masquerade, where he finds himself strangely bored with all the women and lewd activity around him.  Something, however, is different, when he meets Bea, though he’s unaware of her identity.  When she propositions him, he finds all his resolve to change his former rakish ways dissolving away.  They spend a passionate night together, neither knowing the other’s identity, with Bea sneaking home at dawn.

Wick awakes alone, feeling somehow used, and regretful that his companion has left without revealing her identity.  Wick also begins to question whether she was an innocent.  When he attends to business later, at Miss Brown’s home, he recognizes his lover from the previous night, though she’s unmasked.  He determines two things then and there – first, he will obtain her land, and, second, he will marry her.  Bea refuses his offer and his proposal, and the battle of wills is on.  The situation changes, however, when direct attacks begin to happen to Bea’s property and her friend.  Bea agrees to accept Wick’s help finding out who her enemy is.  Wick is adamant that he will court Bea, and that he will find a compromise for the railroad that will be agreeable to both of them.

In the meantime, Bea and Wick continue to have a steamy, and I do mean steamy, affair.  The sexual chemistry between them is off the charts!  Wick is a man trying to atone for a misspent youth, where he gambled, drank, spent, and womanized to excess.  Now his protective and honorable side is obvious, but he can’t subdue his passion for Bea, which she returns.  His treatment helps Bea to finally feel fulfilled, and not that Lady Beastly that the ton called her after her accident.

The search for Bea’s enemy leads them back to London, and the twisted path takes them to some surprising places, including a secret sex club.  (Be warned, there is a scene here involving Bea and Wick that is, in my opinion, really over the top.)  The villain turned out to be a total surprise to me – I love it when the solution to the mystery is not totally obvious.

THE DUKE’S REDEMPTION is well written, engaging, romantic, and very, very steamy.  I totally enjoyed seeing the passion turn to love.  Bea and Wick each brought something the other needed – he felt his worth and honor again, and she felt beautiful and desirable.  They treated each other as equals, and I believe their future will continue to be filled with joy and passion.    ~Rose