Temptation’s Darling

Product Description

The #
1 New York Times
bestselling author of Marry Me by Sundown and Beautiful Tempest brings her “mastery of historical romance” (Entertainment Weekly) to this dazzling Regency-era novel in which a disastrous debutante becomes the toast of the town with a little help from a friend of the Prince Regent’s.

Threatened by powerful enemies, William Blackburn, Earl of Ketterham, lives in exile in the Scottish Highlands with his daughter Vanessa. When she comes of age, William urges her to return to her mother in England to make her society debut. Raised with all the advantages and freedom a boy would have, Vanessa doubts she can fit into the world of ball gowns, parties, and high society. Nonetheless, she agrees to return to England, determined to end the vendetta against her father, never imagining the high price she will have to pay.

Lord Montgomery Townsend enjoys living on the edge, courting danger as he fixes potentially scandalous problems for the Prince Regent. While hiding out at the home of the Countess of Ketterham, Monty watches a disaster-in-the-making as his hostess tries to prepare her estranged daughter for a match with the pompous son of a powerful family. Puzzled as to why the fiercely independent Vanessa submits to being turned into a puppet and offered up to the arrogant rogue, Monty nonetheless steps in to make her dreams come true. But no good deed goes unpunished and soon he faces more pressing problems, including the temptation to upend Vanessa’s wedding plans so he can marry her himself.

Featuring Johanna Lindsey’s “signature blend of witty writing, charmingly unique characters” (
Booklist),
Temptation’s Darling is a passionate romance with a dash of humor that you won’t soon forget.

About the Author

Johanna Lindsey (1952–2019) was world-renowned for her “mastery of historical romance” (
Entertainment Weekly), with more than sixty million copies of her novels sold. She was the author of nearly sixty nationally bestselling novels, many of which reached the #1 spot on the
New York Times bestseller list. Lindsey lived in New Hampshire with her family.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Temptation’s Darling

Chapter One

VANESSA BLACKBURN SAT ON the edge of the cliff overlooking the North Sea. It was a chill spring day in the Scottish Highlands, but she was bundled in her fur-lined winter coat as well as a thick tartan that she could use as a hood if the wind picked up. She wasn’t Scottish—well, she was a little. Her great-grandfather Angus MacCabe had been a Scotsman, but his youngest daughter had married an English earl, a Blackburn. Vanessa’s father, William, was their only surviving son.

There was an old campfire pit nearby, which she and her father lit in the winter on clear nights when they would sit out here to watch the most bizarre display of lights that filled the sky to the north. She was going to miss that amazing spectacle. She was also going to miss riding across the hills and dales, fishing, helping her father with the cattle and horses, all the things she could only do here. She would be leaving soon.

She didn’t want to go. The freedom she’d enjoyed here was addictive. She didn’t want to give it up, but she knew she would have to, at least for a little while when she visited her mother, Kathleen. She was already dreading the arguments and rows they would have when she reached Dawton Manor in Cheshire. She hadn’t forgotten for a minute how adamant and determined her mother was about serving up three absolutely perfect daughters to the ton. Her mother had already put her and her twin sisters through a grueling regimen of the do’s and don’ts of a lady’s proper decorum. Her father called it being turned into a puppet, and it had felt that way to her more often than not. He had taken a different approach to educating her when they arrived in Scotland, hiring all sorts of tutors for her and not one of them had mentioned etiquette to her.

She