Some scandals are meant to be...
When Aurora Hyatt loses her journal in Hyde Park, her ruin is a foregone conclusion. After all, if anyone discovers her writings, they'll find scandalous fantasies involving the newest rake in Town alongside entirely-too-candid thoughts about her typical dreary suitors. Aurora will either be forced into a loveless marriage with the first nodcock to make an offer, or she'll be assigned a permanent position on the shelf. Oh, dear good Lord. What catastrophe will God smote down upon her next?
If Niles Thornton, Baron Quinton, desires to maintain any semblance of his current lifestyle, he must fulfill the requirements his grandfather, Lord Rotheby, has set for him. First and foremost: he must marry and begin filling his nursery within the year. When he is nearly barreled over by a racing curricle and a journal flies out to land at his feet, his troubles are over. Inside the journals pages, Quin discovers a scandal waiting to happen. Surely a young lady who would write such brazen things in a journal (and then dare to lose it) must recognize the necessity of a hasty marriage, even if the gentleman making the offer is rather less-than-honorable.
In a drunken haze, Quin kisses Aurora on a crowded ballroom floor, necessitating their immediate marriage. Quin's troubles are only beginning, however, as Aurora's writings are soon the focus of both gossip rags and drawing room conversation. When word arrives of an even greater scandal following in his wife's wake, will he prove himself a drunken abuser like his father, or will he become the loving husband of Aurora's fantasies?
Twice a Rake has sold more than 75,000 copies worldwide in English and more than 10,000 copies so far in German. At a couple of points, the English version has been free, and it has been downloaded more than 250,000 times. It was also included in a boxed set of historical romances that sold more than 20,000 copies and hit the USA Today bestseller list.
“I still maintain it is a shame that Lord Dodsworth did not live long enough to uphold his agreement,” Aurora Hyatt’s aunt, the Marchioness of Sedgewick said in her nasally voice. “Aurora ought to have been married and widowed years ago. There would be no need for this farcical hunt, wherein she finds every gentleman of good ton unworthy for some confounded reason or another.”
Neither her father nor her aunt could hold Aurora to task for Lord Dodsworth’s demise, however, despite the manner in which she had celebrated her freedom from impending marital doom. The earl had been stricken in years (to the point of being more than twice her age—even older than Father himself) when his face had landed squarely in his bowl of porridge. On that equally horrid and delightful morning only a fortnight before their planned wedding day, bits of gruel had spattered on both his balding head and the worn, royal blue superfine of his overcoat. How could a girl—for that is what Aurora must truly have been considered at the time, having not yet reached her majority—have been enamored of the prospect of a lifetime spent beside a man more akin in age and temperament to her father than to the beaux of her friends?
Regardless of the degree of sheer and utter relief she had felt over the untimely passing of her betrothed, Aurora had been absolved in the matter.
Various other matters, however…well, truth be told, a touch of blame may rest upon her shoulders from time to time. She preferred not to think on them overmuch.
| Language | Status |
|---|---|
|
German
|
Already translated.
|
