"A good romance with a social message"

Desperate Penelope "Pen" Hampton returns from Naples to London seeking protection by her trusty solicitor Julian Hampton. Pen tells Julian that her estranged abusive spouse demands she come to him so that she can begat his heir. Afraid of her husband, the Count of Glasonbury, and knowing he has the law on his side, she informs Julian that her odious spouse sent thugs to retrieve her; she has not even told her brother because she knows society will support the bruising Glasonbury.

Julian has loved Pen for years and willingly would risk his life, career, and place in society to keep her safe, but also has a hidden agenda he keeps secret from his beloved. As Glasonbury seems to turn up with his demands at will, Pen falls in love with her protector, in society accepting abuse is acceptable while divorce is not.

This entreating historical romance emphasizes the plight of women who have no choices except to accept abuse or deal with scandal that loads the individual down as Madeline Hunter paints a grim picture of pre suffragette England. The story line focuses on the plight, but does so through the relationships of the three key characters. Pen's only hope lies in the protection of a man albeit a kind person. Fans will feel her quandary as she cannot save herself.

Harriet Klausner

Reviewed by Harriet Klausner
Posted November 15, 2004

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Summary

Julian Hampton is the fifth member of the London Dueling Society, the reserved, enigmatic lawyer to the Laclere family. All his life, it seemed, Julian had been in love with Penelope, now Countess of Glasbury. And when he learned the horrors she had endured at the hands of her vicious husband, Julian was instrumental in arranging for her escape to Italy. But he has never forgotten the love of his childhood, the woman he had rescued first as a "damsel in distress" when she was a girl, and then for real once she had blossomed into woman. When Penelope returns secretly to London, Julian is the one she turns to, even though her trust in him puts both their reputations, and ultimately their lives, in peril.