TEMPTATION AND SURRENDER

Author: Stephanie Laurens ISBN: 9780061243400 2/2009 HISTORICAL Publisher: WILLIAM MORROW
Time Period: Regency 1825

Handsome, wealthy, and well-born, Jonas Tallent has everything a gentleman needs to enjoy London society to the fullest—and he has. He's played cards until dawn, flirted with eligible young ladies, and made love to some ineligible ones. But now he's restless, bored with the mindless frivolity and careless pleasure, so it's with a sense of relief that he takes up the reins of his family's estate in rural Devon. His most pressing need is to hire a new manager for the inn—the center of village life. Such a small task, yet he discovers few decent applicants are willing to live in a quiet country backwater. Then genteel but impoverished Miss Emily Beauregard applies for the position. Jonas's initial response is an emphatic "no!" Ladies, especially one as attractive as Emily, belong in the ballroom or the bedroom, not running an inn. But with no alternatives, he grudgingly allows Emily to try, and she rapidly proves herself worthy, resurrecting the inn with tact and skill. But Em has a secret. It's not only the need to provide for herself and her orphaned siblings that has brought her to Devon. She's surreptitiously searching for a family treasure hidden in the village, the only clues to its location a cryptic rhyme handed down through the generations. Emily is determined to solve the puzzle, find the treasure and reinstate her family to its rightful place in society. Yet Em hasn't bargained on Jonas. His experience is temptation, his attentions irresistible, and he's determined to aid her in her quest. He eventually persuades her to trust him, and together they unravel the clues. But someone else is watching, waiting, and once the family legacy is unearthed, the villain strikes, threatening Em, her family, and the love she and Jonas have discovered in each others' arms.

RRAH's THOUGHTS AND PONDERINGS:

Stephanie Laurens sets her historical romance, TEMPTATION AND SURRENDER (the 16th in the Cynster series), in Regency England in a countryside village called Colyton, to where Emily Ann Beauregard Colyton and her four siblings to whom she is guardian have escaped from their dastardly uncle, Harold Potheridge. Harold has been using them as unpaid household staff and has begrudgingly paid for Emily’s brother Matthew’s education as another anchor holding them to him. Now that Em is twenty-five, she has sought and been granted (without her uncle’s knowledge) their custody, and while Harold was off fishing, they have fled using their mother’s maiden name as an alias. Thankfully, Emily noticed a posting for a new innkeeper at the Red Bells Inn in Colyton, their ancestral home where they intended to hole up anyway so they can discover the hidden family treasure from the 1600’s when the family partook in piracy. Now she just needs to convince the owner of the inn that she has the appropriate experience so that her family has a job, and a roof over their heads while they conduct their search. Jonas Tallent, Lucifer Cynster’s brother-in-law, is smitten by Em from the moment she walks into his office, and though he has other plans for her ultimately, she talks him into hiring her on a three month trial basis. He can tell immediately that she’s a lady of breeding, perhaps fallen on hard times and not the poor innkeeper described in the false reference letters she procures (written by her siblings). Now if he can just get her to trust him enough to divulge her real purpose in being there, he’ll be home free.

Laurens has created a world within Regency England where her heroines stand up for their rights and the rights of society’s oppressed. They act within the bounds of this society and its strictures, but if they have to choose doing good over doing what class and society deem appropriate, they will always choose to do good. Emily is just such a heroine and I, for one, am glad at times for not being born in her time, for I fear I’d be stuck as a maid or cook or some other weary job for all my life. She hasn’t bent after years of forced servitude to her uncle and has learned to rely on her own wits when it comes to keeping handsy males in their place. The drawback is that she’s never had a male in her life that she can trust with her virtue, her protection, or to know about and help in the finding of her treasure. It is almost her undoing as she does things on her own when it would be good to count on someone else having your back. Jonas is one of those rare men who when struck by love and passion, actually evolves into an enlightened human being, willing to care for another person over his own selfish desires. Not that he and Emily don’t enjoy a few of those heady moments of pleasure once he gets her on his side and convinces her he isn’t just looking for a companionable mistress.

I have to admit that Laurens is one of my favorite romance authors, and the Cynsters and all of their shirt tail relations continue to entertain me. She continues to find new ways to tell the same story of boy meeting girl, while adding morality play, passionate encounters, and a touch of mystery. I appreciate that her descriptive narrations are neither too short, nor drag on, and when I come to the end of a story such as TEMPTATION AND SURRENDER, I almost immediately want to go back and reread it because all of the parts fit together so well, add to my enjoyment, and paint an intriguing portrait of a society from the past.

Susan Barton