Series:
Lyon's Den (Book 98)
One kiss, one scandal, one dangerously convenient
marriage.
Lady Louisa Radcliffe has a talent for blowing things
up—gardens, greenhouses, and her reputation. When the duke's brilliant,
reckless daughter demands a match, she doesn't ask for a titled suitor. She
asks for Dominic Beckett.
Dom is no safe bet. With ruin in his past and restraint
in his present, the last thing he wants is temptation like Louisa. But when one
incendiary kiss sparks scandal, he has no choice but to wed her.
Marriage was supposed to be practical. Instead, it's the
most dangerous gamble of all: falling in love.
Louisa has a large dowry and is the daughter of a duke.
You'd think that would make her irresistible to the men of Society. However,
she has an unusual hobby: she loves experimenting with explosives. Her tendency
to blow things up dampens her appeal. She doesn't care what Society thinks of
her; she's happy as she is - until her father decides it is time for her to
marry. For six months, she has been working with Mrs. Dove-Lyon to find her a
match, but the choices are dismal. As the book opens, she informs the
matchmaker that she wants Dominic Beckett added to the list. Mrs. Dove-Lyon is
horrified. Dominic's reputation as a gambler and a rake makes him unsuitable,
but Louisa insists. She met him when she
was a child, and he was kind to her.
Dominic is the second son of a viscount. He has dyslexia,
which made him a failure in his father's eyes. While words on a page are a
mystery, Dominic's ability with numbers lured him into gambling. Unfortunately
for him and his family's estate, he was not good at it and left them with
enormous debt. He reformed and now tries to live on the straight and narrow,
using his ability with numbers in business to make amends. He is quiet and
self-effacing, not the scoundrel that Society thinks he is. He has no interest
in marriage, but when his matchmaker aunt insists, he agrees to meet Louisa.
I loved the two of them together. The sparks fly between
them from the start, and when a kiss gets out of control, their marriage is a
foregone conclusion. Dominic likes
Louisa just as she is. He supports her scientific activities. He won my heart
with his search for the perfect home for them. I loved that he trusted her with
his reading difficulty. She repaid that trust in a wonderful scene involving
the marriage contracts. In addition to the chemistry that burns between them,
their growing respect for each other quickly grows into love, even if neither
is ready to admit it.
Everything for their future looks promising until one of
Louisa's experiments goes wrong. Dominic's fear for her leads to some
ill-considered words and an extreme reaction from her. It takes a few days of
missing each other to realize how much they mean to each other. I loved
Dominic's big moment at the end as he found the right way to apologize. I'd
love to see them as secondary characters in a later book so I can see how their
lives progress.
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