Lady Emmalene Eberhart wanted a baby. More than that, she simply wanted her husband to do his deed and bed her. For two years Emma had struggled with feeling inadequate and unwanted, but that has all come to an end. Now the King himself had issued an order, thanks to Emma's pleas, and her husband was to consummate their marriage. And then he died, so Emma was still a virgin. Now Emma was to marry a man she has never met, a man who was taking his time in arriving, and a man that she was to bed as soon as the ceremony was over. To save herself and her people from her cousin and his tyrannical mother, Emma would do almost anything. Wedding and bedding the big brawny and handsome man before her really did not seem quite that bad. Was that all there was to marriage? If only her husband would stay put maybe this time she can really be a wife and a mother.

For Amaury de Aneford, becoming a duke was a dream come true. A bastard by birth, Amaury had worked all his life for where he was now. The Lady Emmalene was anything but the hag he had imagined. What kind of man was her first husband, not to find the delicious blonde beautiful? Bedding her is the least of his worries. Every step has taken him closer and closer to ambush. With every step, Amaury has been hunted. Someone wants him dead and will stop at nothing to see it accomplished. There is a traitor in their midst and Amaury's very life depends on his ability to stop them!

THE DEED is yet another story from Lynsay Sands that I simply have to love. THE DEED is filled with all the humor, charm, and romance that I was looking for. From the first pages I knew that Emmalene was going to be a woman after my own heart. From her outlandish request of the King, her bellowing attitude, to her demand to be the wife she never could be; I simply loved her. Emmalene made me laugh at her naivete and I found myself clinging to the rope of bed sheets right along with her.

Amaury was not your typical hero. His background left a lot to be desired, and he had some strange views on women and just what a wife is supposed to be. It was rather comical between the two of them an all of their misconceptions. Watching them grow, not only as a couple, but as two individuals brought together by circumstance was a wonderful experience. Lynsay Sands did a remarkable job creating these two characters and in writing about the time period. It simply amazes me the things that people believed all because the church told them it was so. As funny as it was romantic, THE DEED is a read that cannot be forgotten.