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A Promise to Dishonour
Librarian Note: There is an Alternate Cover Edition for this ISBN here.
Once a rake -- always a rake?
If only Ashlie's brother hadn't accepted work so far away from London. Perhaps then his wife wouldn't have fallen for her rakish boss and Ashlie wouldn't have had to interfere...
"You drive a hard bargain," Chase Marriner conceded the day Ashlie confronted him about the illicit weekends the lovers had planned. "In exchange for your spending the time away with me, I'll guarentee Lynette remains my employee and nothing more."
Now Ashlie had only to arrange things st that Chase would honor his side of the bargain -- while she dishonored hers!
Once a rake -- always a rake?
If only Ashlie's brother hadn't accepted work so far away from London. Perhaps then his wife wouldn't have fallen for her rakish boss and Ashlie wouldn't have had to interfere...
"You drive a hard bargain," Chase Marriner conceded the day Ashlie confronted him about the illicit weekends the lovers had planned. "In exchange for your spending the time away with me, I'll guarentee Lynette remains my employee and nothing more."
Now Ashlie had only to arrange things st that Chase would honor his side of the bargain -- while she dishonored hers!
- GenresHqn
188 pages, Paperback
First published October 1, 1985
About the author
Jessica Steele
341 books113 followersJessica Steele was born on May 9, 1933 in the elegant Warwickshire town of Royal Leamington Spa. She has two super brothers, Colin and George, and a lovely sister, Elizabeth. She was a delicate child and missed a lot of school. In fact, she left school at aged 14, when she was diagnosed as having tuberculosis. At 16, she started work as a junior clerk. In 1967, Jessica married with her husband, Peter and within a very short space of time they had moved from her hometown to the lovely area where they now live. Their house is built into the side of a hill, and has beautiful views over more hills and valleys. Her brothers and her sister are very close and she has plenty of nephews and nieces to make up for the fact that she and her husband have no children of their own. Both she and her husband are more than a little dog-oriented, and their current dog is a Staffordshire bull terrier named Florence. Florence is gorgeous. She loves everybody but, since she is 40 pounds of dynamite and would hurl her boisterous self at everyone she meets - given half a chance - she has to be restrained (as much as possible). She is fun.
Her husband spurred Jessica on to her writing career, giving her every support while she did what she considers her five-year apprenticeship (the rejection years) while learning how to write. She published her first books in 1979. Jessica has tried using a typewriter, but it just doesn't work for her. She is much happier writing in longhand, and in actual fact has a dozen or so fountain pens filled and ready to go at the start of any one session. A friend has a secretarial agency and, after deciphering Jessica's writing, returns an immaculately typed manuscript. To gain authentic background for her books, she has travelled and researched in Greece, Russia, Egypt, Mexico, Peru, Chile, Hong Kong, China and Japan.
Her husband spurred Jessica on to her writing career, giving her every support while she did what she considers her five-year apprenticeship (the rejection years) while learning how to write. She published her first books in 1979. Jessica has tried using a typewriter, but it just doesn't work for her. She is much happier writing in longhand, and in actual fact has a dozen or so fountain pens filled and ready to go at the start of any one session. A friend has a secretarial agency and, after deciphering Jessica's writing, returns an immaculately typed manuscript. To gain authentic background for her books, she has travelled and researched in Greece, Russia, Egypt, Mexico, Peru, Chile, Hong Kong, China and Japan.
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
January 24, 2016
Re A Promise to Dishonour - if you pick this book up and think, I have read this before - you may be right. The premise of this one is the exact same premise as Sara Craven's Dark Paradise - which we did about a 130 books ago.
Once again we have a 22 year old h who, upon finding out her boss that she was in love with is a womanizing rake, dumps her job and leaves her home to move to London to live with her brand-new sister-in-law while the h's brother is off on two year assignment to Brazil.
Once again we have a conniving sis-in-law that manipulates the h into thinking that in lieu of her brother, the SIL is going to substitute her boss for the conjugal rights experience in the empty side of the SIL's marital bed. This time the SIL convinces the h that the boss is taking her for a weekend in Paris.
(Where do these SIL's keep coming from? I think there is a special conniving SIL section in HPlandia's Harrod's that mass produces these women and marks them down in the sales as half-brained 60% off. Only in HPlandia do we have supposedly intelligent career women lying about an affair to make the absent hubby's sister write and tell their brother "Your wife is having an affair with her boss," to get the absent hubby home.
How these ladies thought to avoid divorce court if the h's of these stories actually had written something like that is totally beyond me. I also have to wonder how they thought they would ever be accepted into the family again after all the lies and fabrications. I wouldn't be feeling to familial to a woman who treated my brother like that. )
The h doesn't write to her brother to tell him about his wife's straying in this one either. She does what all good HP h's do to defend the sanctity of her big brother's marriage - she goes right to the wife-stealing sneaky boss.
I have to admit, upon meeting this h, I wondered how she was going to pull it off. This h's personality is more befuddled kitten chasing her tail because it moved than fierce rottweiler defending her family's honor.
After the h tracks the boss down a few times, the witty verbal exchanges begin. The boss, who has absolutely no clue what the h is talking about, likes what he sees enough to suavely offer to sub the h into the SIL's potential weekend companion slot.
The h thinks about this for a bit, and devious kitten that she is, decides to extract the solemn promise from the boss that he will cease and desist his siege of the SIL if the h goes away with him. Her little plan is to go away with the H, but offer a well-brought up young lady's refusal to share his bed thus keeping her part of the bargain as he keeps his.
(It apparently never occurs to the h that the H could lie, just like her last boss did, or that a man who can casually chose and toss ladies might not take no for answer. Then again, such logical thinking would never even occur to an h in HPlandia, it is totally against the rules-- and it is a good thing that the HP universe isn't fueled by an h's brainwave output,-- we would never get any stories out of it.)
So the h agrees to meet the H on Friday, the day of departure for the fabled Paris weekend. The h goes right from work to the H's house and is patiently waiting when he returns from the airport after telling the SIL that Paris is out. The H decides to spend the weekend at home, but the h is determined that the agreement calls for a weekend AWAY and demands that the H do just that.
The H is wondering what on earth he has set himself up for by this point, there is no H pov in this one, but just the way he reacts and the things he says let the reader know that this is completely unexpected.
The h is oblivious, as she is too worried about how to avoid losing her virtue, but from the time the h tracks the H down to reprimand him for the affair the book becomes pretty funny. So the H puts the h up for the night at his house and he tells her they will go off in the morning.
The next day he takes her to a country house hotel and books them a suite. They are getting acquainted and the h is amateur psychoanalyzing the H, much to his great amusement, when they run into her parents. The h is mortified but the H pulls off the old "just escorting your daughter down to meet my mum and we stopped for a meal," trick and then discretely books them into a different hotel.
He gets two rooms this time, as he figures he isn't getting lucky that night. The next morning, after a small kissing scene but a night spent apart, the h and H run into the h's old boss that she was in love with. This causes more consternation, as the H fakes being the h's fiance this time, to escape the situation. The H decides the weekend is over as he exasperatedly asks the h if there is anywhere she goes that she doesn't run into a close acquaintance.
The h is relieved that she doesn't have to keep coming up with plans to deflect the H's attentions. When they get back to the H's house, he makes her stay the night by disabling her car (the weather is bad and he is worried about her safety,) and she starts arguing with him again and it turns into passionate kissing. The h is ready to succumb to the H's magical aura of love and then she tells him she is a virgin.
The H jumps up like a bucket of ice water hit him and the spell is broken. The h is sad, cause she figured out she in love with the H, but the weekend is over and back to work she goes. She then finds out that the H did not break the date with the SIL, the h's brother came home to check on his wife and so the SIL decides to learn Portuguese and move out to Brazil to be with her hubby and broke the date herself.
The H sends flowers and tries to call the h, but she believes he is chasing the SIL again and tells him off in no uncertain terms. The SIL then tricks her into going to the H's house and the whole story comes out. The denouement of the SIL and her lies are explained. There was a Paris trip, but the whole company team the SIL worked on was going and the H was not. The H confesses that he used the lie to chase the h and fell in love along the route. After some serious h convincing, she is overjoyed, declares her love back and huge HEA.
This one was surprisingly funny, unlike Dark Paradise, the entire trip becomes a comedy of errors and funny mishaps. There is no angst, except the usual JS h's little mope when she thinks the H is lost to her forever, but that only lasts for two pages and the H's straight man to the h's antics is pretty entertaining.
The h may be too kittenish and silly for HP'ers who like more angsty drama, but the H is charming and kind and I liked how he kept rescuing the h from herself even as he wondered how he got into this position. Give this one a go when you need a lift and have some time, it isn't the best or funniest HP ever, but it does have some charm to it.
Once again we have a 22 year old h who, upon finding out her boss that she was in love with is a womanizing rake, dumps her job and leaves her home to move to London to live with her brand-new sister-in-law while the h's brother is off on two year assignment to Brazil.
Once again we have a conniving sis-in-law that manipulates the h into thinking that in lieu of her brother, the SIL is going to substitute her boss for the conjugal rights experience in the empty side of the SIL's marital bed. This time the SIL convinces the h that the boss is taking her for a weekend in Paris.
(Where do these SIL's keep coming from? I think there is a special conniving SIL section in HPlandia's Harrod's that mass produces these women and marks them down in the sales as half-brained 60% off. Only in HPlandia do we have supposedly intelligent career women lying about an affair to make the absent hubby's sister write and tell their brother "Your wife is having an affair with her boss," to get the absent hubby home.
How these ladies thought to avoid divorce court if the h's of these stories actually had written something like that is totally beyond me. I also have to wonder how they thought they would ever be accepted into the family again after all the lies and fabrications. I wouldn't be feeling to familial to a woman who treated my brother like that. )
The h doesn't write to her brother to tell him about his wife's straying in this one either. She does what all good HP h's do to defend the sanctity of her big brother's marriage - she goes right to the wife-stealing sneaky boss.
I have to admit, upon meeting this h, I wondered how she was going to pull it off. This h's personality is more befuddled kitten chasing her tail because it moved than fierce rottweiler defending her family's honor.
After the h tracks the boss down a few times, the witty verbal exchanges begin. The boss, who has absolutely no clue what the h is talking about, likes what he sees enough to suavely offer to sub the h into the SIL's potential weekend companion slot.
The h thinks about this for a bit, and devious kitten that she is, decides to extract the solemn promise from the boss that he will cease and desist his siege of the SIL if the h goes away with him. Her little plan is to go away with the H, but offer a well-brought up young lady's refusal to share his bed thus keeping her part of the bargain as he keeps his.
(It apparently never occurs to the h that the H could lie, just like her last boss did, or that a man who can casually chose and toss ladies might not take no for answer. Then again, such logical thinking would never even occur to an h in HPlandia, it is totally against the rules-- and it is a good thing that the HP universe isn't fueled by an h's brainwave output,-- we would never get any stories out of it.)
So the h agrees to meet the H on Friday, the day of departure for the fabled Paris weekend. The h goes right from work to the H's house and is patiently waiting when he returns from the airport after telling the SIL that Paris is out. The H decides to spend the weekend at home, but the h is determined that the agreement calls for a weekend AWAY and demands that the H do just that.
The H is wondering what on earth he has set himself up for by this point, there is no H pov in this one, but just the way he reacts and the things he says let the reader know that this is completely unexpected.
The h is oblivious, as she is too worried about how to avoid losing her virtue, but from the time the h tracks the H down to reprimand him for the affair the book becomes pretty funny. So the H puts the h up for the night at his house and he tells her they will go off in the morning.
The next day he takes her to a country house hotel and books them a suite. They are getting acquainted and the h is amateur psychoanalyzing the H, much to his great amusement, when they run into her parents. The h is mortified but the H pulls off the old "just escorting your daughter down to meet my mum and we stopped for a meal," trick and then discretely books them into a different hotel.
He gets two rooms this time, as he figures he isn't getting lucky that night. The next morning, after a small kissing scene but a night spent apart, the h and H run into the h's old boss that she was in love with. This causes more consternation, as the H fakes being the h's fiance this time, to escape the situation. The H decides the weekend is over as he exasperatedly asks the h if there is anywhere she goes that she doesn't run into a close acquaintance.
The h is relieved that she doesn't have to keep coming up with plans to deflect the H's attentions. When they get back to the H's house, he makes her stay the night by disabling her car (the weather is bad and he is worried about her safety,) and she starts arguing with him again and it turns into passionate kissing. The h is ready to succumb to the H's magical aura of love and then she tells him she is a virgin.
The H jumps up like a bucket of ice water hit him and the spell is broken. The h is sad, cause she figured out she in love with the H, but the weekend is over and back to work she goes. She then finds out that the H did not break the date with the SIL, the h's brother came home to check on his wife and so the SIL decides to learn Portuguese and move out to Brazil to be with her hubby and broke the date herself.
The H sends flowers and tries to call the h, but she believes he is chasing the SIL again and tells him off in no uncertain terms. The SIL then tricks her into going to the H's house and the whole story comes out. The denouement of the SIL and her lies are explained. There was a Paris trip, but the whole company team the SIL worked on was going and the H was not. The H confesses that he used the lie to chase the h and fell in love along the route. After some serious h convincing, she is overjoyed, declares her love back and huge HEA.
This one was surprisingly funny, unlike Dark Paradise, the entire trip becomes a comedy of errors and funny mishaps. There is no angst, except the usual JS h's little mope when she thinks the H is lost to her forever, but that only lasts for two pages and the H's straight man to the h's antics is pretty entertaining.
The h may be too kittenish and silly for HP'ers who like more angsty drama, but the H is charming and kind and I liked how he kept rescuing the h from herself even as he wondered how he got into this position. Give this one a go when you need a lift and have some time, it isn't the best or funniest HP ever, but it does have some charm to it.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
March 3, 2011
I'm so not a fan of blackmail/meek heroines (which basically means I hate 90% of all HQNs) but the heroine at least tried to out-smart the guy so...there's that..
Also the sentence structuring in this book was CRAZY - Ms Steele clearly never heard of conjunctions to reduce the confusion for the reader...
examples include
"She was silent more because she had nothing she wanted to say to him, than from having any thought that he would need to concentrate on the road. But when with snow falling heavily, they had seemed to have been on the road for hours, though the car clock telling her that barely an hour and a half had gone by, so Ashlie began again to grow all knotted up inside"
Too many darned comas
October 9, 2025
Note to self: This guy made my skin crawl, don’t read it again.
Dumbass heroine (22) who wants to save her brother’s marriage agrees to a dirty weekend with the ‘hero’ (mid 30s) so he doesn’t take the SIL to Paris (the home of the dirty weekend). He is a manwhore, and somehow the author justifies it at the end with his confession that he did not try it on with her SIL (not sure I agreed with that anyway). But he still puts it about and would have had sex with the heroine even though he knew nothing about her.
There was no chemistry. It was an utter fail by this author, who can sometimes redeem her unpleasant heroes.
The SIL is either a manipulative bitch or a liar. She didn’t care that the heroine was upset by her behaviour. The hero has no good points. The fact that the heroine fell for him means she has really low standards.
This was a sordid mess.
1 1\2 stars
Dumbass heroine (22) who wants to save her brother’s marriage agrees to a dirty weekend with the ‘hero’ (mid 30s) so he doesn’t take the SIL to Paris (the home of the dirty weekend). He is a manwhore, and somehow the author justifies it at the end with his confession that he did not try it on with her SIL (not sure I agreed with that anyway). But he still puts it about and would have had sex with the heroine even though he knew nothing about her.
There was no chemistry. It was an utter fail by this author, who can sometimes redeem her unpleasant heroes.
The SIL is either a manipulative bitch or a liar. She didn’t care that the heroine was upset by her behaviour. The hero has no good points. The fact that the heroine fell for him means she has really low standards.
This was a sordid mess.
1 1\2 stars
Did Not Finish
October 24, 2010Perhaps it seems redundant to say this about a romance hero who blackmails a woman into having sex with him -- but this guy was so skeezy! I can't believe he's not showing off a gold medallion in his chest hair on the cover; when he talked about whether or not she would "come across" I could just see his Playboy club insignia. Blackmail is fine, just do it with a little class, please!
October 24, 2023
Fun reading of olds with misunderstandings all the way.
The heroine lives with her sister in law. Her brother is in Brazil for a two years assignment so the women live together.
Soon the sil begins to stay late at work, to go out for dinners and plans a weekend in Paris. The sil has a boss who’s a womanizer and heroine thinks they’re having an affair. So she, the naive, virgin and self sacrificing heroine, goes to the hero’s house and asks him to leave her sil alone. The hero proposes the heroine to go to Paris with him instead of her sil. Heroine offends him a lot and leaves, but eventually gives in and accepts to go instead of him leaving sil permanently alone.
It was quite fun because their journey, who was not in Paris but in Yorkshire, is a complete mess, and we’re really wondering why the hero wanted the heroine to go to him since by the description everyone can see she was an inexperienced and quite repressed young woman. She was even cute, with short wavy hair instead of big long hair… arrived in Yorkshire they meet the heroine’s parents who are also on holiday and things are really hilarious with the heroine appalled and the hero making up lies about their journey there and forced to leave in a snow storms because she doesn’t want the parents to know they’re together. The poor hero spends all the weekend driving in the snow and trying to reassure the scared heroine that he doesn’t want to rape her. I can only imagine how many times he regretted asking that girl to leave with him. Hilarious.
At the end of the disastrous weekend they are kissing and making out and the hero thinks that at last they can do something, but the heroine looks at him with stars in her eyes and confesses that she’s a virgin. Nothing like that to cockblock the poor man. He jumps and leaves as a rocket. The sil affair seems to be still there and when the hero eventually manages to talk to the heroine he tells her there was nothing with sil and never was. Sil made up a story to make her husband jealous, the weekend in Paris was with a group of colleagues and the hero deceived the heroine because he was interested in her, but as soon as he started spending time with her he realized her he loved her and wanted more than an affair. It was cute and hilarious. The heroine was a scared, inhibited and even childish girl and honestly I don’t know yet what the hero found in her, and how he couldn’t realize she was inexperienced. A Diana Palmer hero would have seen her for what she was from a mile. The episodes with the parents, with the heroine’s ex and each time she insulted the hero without a care in the world were really funny. The sil was manipulative and selfish but eventually the heroine was so happy that she didn’t cheat on her brother that immediately forgave her.
The heroine lives with her sister in law. Her brother is in Brazil for a two years assignment so the women live together.
Soon the sil begins to stay late at work, to go out for dinners and plans a weekend in Paris. The sil has a boss who’s a womanizer and heroine thinks they’re having an affair. So she, the naive, virgin and self sacrificing heroine, goes to the hero’s house and asks him to leave her sil alone. The hero proposes the heroine to go to Paris with him instead of her sil. Heroine offends him a lot and leaves, but eventually gives in and accepts to go instead of him leaving sil permanently alone.
It was quite fun because their journey, who was not in Paris but in Yorkshire, is a complete mess, and we’re really wondering why the hero wanted the heroine to go to him since by the description everyone can see she was an inexperienced and quite repressed young woman. She was even cute, with short wavy hair instead of big long hair… arrived in Yorkshire they meet the heroine’s parents who are also on holiday and things are really hilarious with the heroine appalled and the hero making up lies about their journey there and forced to leave in a snow storms because she doesn’t want the parents to know they’re together. The poor hero spends all the weekend driving in the snow and trying to reassure the scared heroine that he doesn’t want to rape her. I can only imagine how many times he regretted asking that girl to leave with him. Hilarious.
At the end of the disastrous weekend they are kissing and making out and the hero thinks that at last they can do something, but the heroine looks at him with stars in her eyes and confesses that she’s a virgin. Nothing like that to cockblock the poor man. He jumps and leaves as a rocket. The sil affair seems to be still there and when the hero eventually manages to talk to the heroine he tells her there was nothing with sil and never was. Sil made up a story to make her husband jealous, the weekend in Paris was with a group of colleagues and the hero deceived the heroine because he was interested in her, but as soon as he started spending time with her he realized her he loved her and wanted more than an affair. It was cute and hilarious. The heroine was a scared, inhibited and even childish girl and honestly I don’t know yet what the hero found in her, and how he couldn’t realize she was inexperienced. A Diana Palmer hero would have seen her for what she was from a mile. The episodes with the parents, with the heroine’s ex and each time she insulted the hero without a care in the world were really funny. The sil was manipulative and selfish but eventually the heroine was so happy that she didn’t cheat on her brother that immediately forgave her.
June 9, 2024
Absolutely loved this one.
Yes Ashlie has an overactive imagination but I'm giving it five stars because it was a funny and feisty read and it made me laugh. Lots of misunderstandings along the way but we knew from the beginning didn't we what the outcome would be?
Yes Ashlie has an overactive imagination but I'm giving it five stars because it was a funny and feisty read and it made me laugh. Lots of misunderstandings along the way but we knew from the beginning didn't we what the outcome would be?
May 25, 2021
Once a rake -- always a rake?
If only Ashlie's brother hadn't accepted work so far away from London. Perhaps then his wife wouldn't have fallen for her rakish boss and Ashlie wouldn't have had to interfere...
"You drive a hard bargain," Chase Marriner conceded the day Ashlie confronted him about the illicit weekends the lovers had planned. "In exchange for your spending the time away with me, I'll guarentee Lynette remains my employee and nothing more."
Now Ashlie had only to arrange things st that Chase would honor his side of the bargain -- while she dishonored hers!
If only Ashlie's brother hadn't accepted work so far away from London. Perhaps then his wife wouldn't have fallen for her rakish boss and Ashlie wouldn't have had to interfere...
"You drive a hard bargain," Chase Marriner conceded the day Ashlie confronted him about the illicit weekends the lovers had planned. "In exchange for your spending the time away with me, I'll guarentee Lynette remains my employee and nothing more."
Now Ashlie had only to arrange things st that Chase would honor his side of the bargain -- while she dishonored hers!
January 16, 2012
Klasik patron erkek, boyun eğen kadın modeli bir Steele kitabı =)
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews