** spoiler alert ** Eloisa James is fast becoming my favourite author of historical romances. I'm reading two of her series concurrently - this one, and the Desperate Duchesses - and they're both such fun reads, so well written, with such wonderful characters - that the only thing that compensates for coming to the end of one is the knowledge that there's another one to read next.

There is a ton of sexual tension in this book, what with Annabel and her fiancé Ardmore sharing a bed each night on their two-week carriage trek from London to Scotland, but restricting themselves to kissing, until they can be married on Ardmore's land, by Ardmore's clergyman. At least, that's the plan; what actually happens increases both the intimacy of the protagonists, the roundedness of their characters, and the sexual tension of the book. James writes great foreplay.

There are only two more sisters left in this series - widowed Imogen, whose husband died only two weeks after they were married, and who is wading through grief, self-doubt, and rage in the face of her sisters' marital happiness, and not-nearly-as-innocent-as-she-should-be Josephine, still in the schoolroom with all those classics, more lurid in the original Greek and Latin than most of the modern popular novels she's so carefully protected from. Looking forward to reading those.