The Barnes & Noble Review
Judith Ivory has a real talent for creating surprising situations and sensual sizzle. In Victorian England, a powerful viscount and a Yorkshire vicar's widow seem a most unlikely match. But, from the first, the situation between Stuart Aysgarth and Emma Hotchkiss has been anything but typical. While the viscount has recently inherited his unlamented father's vast property and responsibility, the wealth to maintain it is beyond his reach. Stuart is locked in a legal struggle with his father's greedy brother, who almost succeeded in claiming the title and property as his own before Stuart could return from his self-imposed exile abroad...and who has stolen many of the estate's more portable valuables, including two that are particularly precious to the rightful heir. Meanwhile, Emma's background includes much more than writing her husband's sermons and tending his sheep. When the viscount refuses to pay for the valuable lamb his coach horse killed, the lovely widow quickly slips back into habits from her disreputable past to swindle the devastatingly handsome, infuriating peer out of what she sees as her due. Trust doesn't come easily to either of them...but when Stuart proposes they work together to dupe his uncle out of his ill-gotten gains, he makes an offer Emma cannot refuse. The confidence game they set in motion is a tricky balancing act, with vengeance as well as wealth as its goals...and an immensely imaginative range of intimacies between these unlikely conspirators as an unexpected and irresistible reward. Sue Stone