The Duchess in His Bed: A Sins for All Seasons Novel

by Lorraine Heath

Overview

For a duchess with practical desires, falling in love is an inconceivable part of her plan…

 As owner of the Elysium Club which caters to women’s fantasies, Aiden Trewlove is accustomed to introducing adventurous ladies to sin and vice. But he is uncharacteristically intrigued by the mysterious beauty who visits his club one night, yearning to indulge in the forbidden—with him. Drawn to her indomitable spirit, he breaks his rule of never becoming personally involved with his clientele and is determined to fully awaken her desires.

A recent widow, Selena Sheffield, Duchess of Lushing, has never known passion, not until Aiden’s slow, sensual seduction leads her on a journey of discovery and incredible pleasure. But her reasons for visiting the notorious club are not all that they seem.

As Selena’s motives become complicated by love, she finds herself with a most unexpected choice: forge ahead with a secret plan that could secure her future—or follow her heart which could prove ruinous.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780062676061
Publisher:	HarperCollins
Publication date:	08/20/2019
Pages:	400
Sales rank:	236,783
Product dimensions:	4.10(w) x 6.50(h) x 1.30(d)

About the Author

Lorraine Heath always dreamed of being a writer. After graduating from the University of Texas, she wrote training manuals, press releases, articles, and computer code, but something was always missing. When she read a romance novel, she not only became hooked on the genre, but quickly realized what her writing lacked: rebels, scoundrels, and rogues. She’s been writing about them ever since. Her novels have been recognized with numerous industry awards and have appeared on the USA Today and New York Times bestseller lists.

Editorial Reviews

06/24/2019

Unfortunately, Heath’s Victorian-era follow-up to the riveting The Scoundrel in Her Bed has a slow, formulaic plot. The recently widowed Selena Sheffield, Duchess of Lushing, is in dire straits because the duke’s vast properties will revert to the Crown unless she can produce a son with sufficient rapidity to claim that her husband fathered the child. Hoping to get pregnant in a hurry, she visits Aiden Trewlove’s private London club for noblewomen, seeking the owner himself. Aiden and his siblings, all illegitimate, were tossed away by their noble father and raised in poor conditions. But unlike his siblings, he has no desire to marry back into the aristocracy, striving for business success instead. Beautiful Selena tempts him, as his secretly produced son could be a future duke. In previous Sins for All Seasons novels, Heath brought together couples who were already acquainted; perhaps this entry seems colder because Aiden and Selena are essentially strangers and get to know each other slowly and without real chemistry. Even series fans will find this a disappointment. (Aug.)

Publishers Weekly

2019-06-17
An aristocratic widow in need of a baby propositions an infamous club owner in the fourth Sins for All Seasons novel.

Aiden Trewlove, one of the many illegitimate children of an unethical earl, never intends to risk pregnancy with any woman. So when Selena, the Duchess of Lushing, arrives incognito at his Elysium gambling club, he feels an electric attraction but only imagines a brief affair. Her bold request to sleep with him, however, conceals a plan that will test his strongest principle. While her motive elicits sympathy for her and the financial vulnerability of women, particularly Victorian ones, her targeting of Aiden is discomfiting, as it is based on self-serving assumptions similar to ones associated with sex workers. Their insta-lust, which is meant to make more palatable her rush to get him into bed, does not improve the plot. When she confesses her true intentions out of guilt, Aiden agrees to join in her scheme for reasons boiling down to low self-esteem. Though secret baby plots are fairly common, this novel isn't sold on its own premise, and the compressed duration of the relationship makes it hard to believe in the romance even by the genre's flexible standards of realism. Heath (Scoundrel in Her Bed, 2018, etc.) tries to counter this with long passages of each protagonist's point of view and the couple's sexual encounters, but this only pads out an idea that might have been better suited to a novella. Selena's siblings, who drive her actions, seem like outlines, as do Aiden's (though the latter are familiar figures in the series). Aiden's biological parents fare no better even though they have distinguishing traits, serving mainly as plot devices to prolong the suspense of how the couple will conquer the alleged hurdle to their happiness. The epilogue only makes the barrier look even more of a straw man in hindsight.

A story of marrying status to wealth to consolidate one's immediate family's advantages.

Kirkus Reviews