Preparing for her fourth season with no prospects, Lady Sarah Conningham believes she'd rather endure spinsterhood than marry in the conventional norm. Sarah wants love and passion within her marriage and strives for the ideal as she realizes her chances are growing dim. Then to her amazement, her neighbor, Charles, the Earl of Meredith, offers matrimony. She's been secretly infatuation with him for years, but he's never given any indication that she'd caught his eye. Sarah surprises herself, and Charlie, by declining to give him an answer until they've had time to get to know one another.
Charlie has thought long and hard about his requirements for his future countess. At first glance, Sarah is ordinary and unassuming, but her displays of generosity and demeanor convince him she'll be an ideal countess. As he's considered a great matrimonial catch, Charlie is not prepared for her hesitation. He agrees to Sarah's demands with a two-week time restriction and looks forward to the unexpected challenge she presents.
Sarah, innocent but not naive, realizes Charlie's strategy is to seduce her into accepting. She counters with her own plan, trying to see if affection between them can grow into love. Sarah has her hands full as Charlie expects a conventional marriage of affection and duty.
Successful author Stephanie Laurens delivers a lush and sensual love story between an alpha male, who refuses to recognize love, and a strong and resourceful heroine, who will not stop until she captures his heart. An added treat is the tantalizing glimpses Ms. Laurens drops for her next Bastion Club story.
For no gentleman is this more true than for Charles
Morwellan, the 8th Earl of Meredith. Although he's seen the
many successful unions of his Cynster connections, he has
also watched his father's obsessions nearly destroy his
family and fortune, a mistake Charles will not repeat. But
as Lord Meredith he must marry, so he offers for Sarah,
daughter of his neighbors, Lord and Lady Conningham. She's
intelligent enough to run his social life, beautiful enough
to grace his arm, and old enough to know the value of his
offer.
For most young ladies of the ton, the right marriage is the
culmination of years of training, perfect deportment and
intricate plans and statagems that would impress a general.
But as a lady of independent means with a life of her own,
Sarah is unwilling to surrender her independence unless it
be for unbounded love.
But Charles always gets what he wants. He convinces Sarah
to give him two weeks to win her, after which-if he
succeeds-they will marry immediately. And so begins an
intense courtship. By day, Charles and Sarah are models of
decorum indulging in innocuous walks, polite conversation,
sedate waltzes. But each night they steal away to the lush,
moonlit gardens where sensual embraces turn to searing
kisses, which soon become much more. Both are swept away on
a tide of passion and feeling neither can resist.
But after the wedding, despite nights of insatiable
passion, by day Charles maintains an aloof distance as if
the near-sinful sweetness of their nights exists only in a
dream. Sarah battles to prove that true love is a force
that can't be contained, a gift worth fighting for, but
it's only when she's engulfed in a web of increasingly
dangerous incidents that Charles discovers how much he's
willing to surrender to protect...the taste of innocence.
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