All Lady Maura Daventry wants is a quiet life of comfort and respectability, but as the daughter of a former stage actress who was murdered by her married lover, respectability is exactly what the London ton refuses to give her. On the night Maura makes her debut into society, she is the target of hostile stares, whispered insults, and lewd advances. She seeks refuge in a darkened library, where she comes face to face with a man of startling beauty and sensual allure, who unfortunately turns out to be the Earl of Hawksley, the son of the man who murdered her mother.
Society has always expected Gabriel Sutcliffe, the Earl of Hawksley, to be just like his drunken, adulterous father, who committed suicide following the murder of Maura's mother. Faced with his father's death and disgrace, Gabriel decides to embrace society's nickname of "the Devil's Own", and does his best to live up to everyone's low expectations. But from the moment he sees her, something about Maura Daventry fascinates him, and he finds himself unwillingly playing the role of knight in shining armor on several occasions, despite Maura's emphatic protestations that she does not want or need him.
Maura knows that she shouldn't trust the devilish Earl, especially after she stumbles upon her mother's diary and a stack of old letters which show that the Marchioness was not having an affair, and that the author of the letters most likely murdered both the Marchioness and the Earl. Maura decides to track down the identity of the killer to clear her mother's good name, but standing in her way is the Devil's Own, who challenges both her resolve and her self-control. Can she resist the passionate urges he inspires, or will she lose both her will and her virtue to one of London's most notorious rakes?
THE DEVIL'S TEMPTATION, the second installment in Kimberly Logan's trilogy which began with SINS OF MIDNIGHT, is a sensual, intriguing journey to Regency London. The passionate interplay between Maura and Gabriel will keep you turning the pages, while the auxiliary characters provide a degree of menace that maintains the tension throughout. My only real complaint is that both Maura and Gabriel miss several obvious clues to the killer's identity. However, another villain lurks in the epilogue, and I'm eager to read the exciting conclusion in book three.
A debauched ball, packed with London's seediest revelers, is
no place for the decent young woman I've tried so hard to
be. But if I'm to avoid my mother's shameful scandal that
led to her still-unsolved murderβI, Lady Maura Daventry,
must be willing to hunt everywhere for the truth about her
killer. But I never expected I would encounter the devil
himself: the Earl of Hawksley, a wicked, charismatic
rakehell who has set ton tongues wagging by bedding women
all over London . . . and whose father was the prime suspect
in the murder of his married loverβmy mother.
But new evidence seems to suggest another culprit was
responsibleβand the only man offering to assist me in my
hunt is the dangerously seductive Hawksley, who, alas, grows
more intriguing to me by the hour.
I have heard the stories of his grand indiscretions. But I
never dreamed I would become one.
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