But Sir Charles and a number of his staff, Alleyne included, had moved to Brussels while the Allied armies under the Duke of Wellington’s command gathered there in response to a new threat from Napoléon Bonaparte, who had escaped from his exile on the island of Elba earlier in the spring and was raising a formidable army in France again.

He had been assigned to the embassy at the Hague under Sir Charles Stuart. Recently he had decided that it was time he did something useful with his life and had embarked upon a career as a diplomat. He had imagined-if he had thought of it at all-clean, clear air to breathe. He had imagined clarity of vision, the ability to see all points of the battlefield at all times, the ability to assess the progress of the battle at every moment. He had imagined the rapid popping of gunfire, disturbing, but not obliterating, the silence. He had imagined cavalry and infantry and artillery, all pristine and picturesque in their various uniforms, moving about neatly and logically, like the pieces on a chessboard.

He had imagined neatly deployed lines, the British and her allies on this side, the enemy on that, flat land like the playing fields of Eton between them. But he had listened with avid interest to the war stories sometimes told by his elder brother, Lord Aidan Bedwyn, a recently retired cavalry colonel, and had thought he could picture such a scene. HAVING SPENT ALMOST ALL OF HIS TWENTY-five years in England and therefore isolated from most of the hostilities that had ravaged the rest of Europe since the rise to power of Napoléon Bonaparte, Lord Alleyne Bedwyn, third brother of the Duke of Bewcastle, had no personal experience of pitched battles. Thus begins a sizzling courtship where two wary hearts are about to be undone by the most scandalous passion of all: glorious, all-consuming love.From the Paperback edition.Step into a world of scandal and surprise. For Gervase, only the marriage bed will do, but Morgan simply will not have him. There is only one thing standing in his way: Morgan, who has achieved the impossible-she's melted his coolly guarded heart. Nor is it of interest to the fiercely independent Lady Morgan herself.until one night of shocking intimacy erupts in a scandal that could make Gervase's vengeance all the sweeter.

But wedlock is not on the mind of the continent's most notorious rake. From the moment he spies Lady Morgan Bedwyn across the glittering ballroom, Gervase Ashford, Earl of Rosthorn, knows he has found the perfect instrument of his revenge. Meet the Bedwyns-six brothers and sisters-men and women of passion and privilege, daring and sensuality.Enter their dazzling world of high society and breathtaking seduction.where each will seek love, fight temptation, and court scandal.and where Morgan Bedwyn, the willful youngest daughter, discovers that true love is a temptation no woman can-or should-resist.Young.

Slightly tempted by mary balogh