Author: Julia Quinn
Amelia Willoughby is being embarrassed by her fiance and he doesn't even seem to know it. Normally being engaged to someone as lofty as Thomas Cavendish, Duke of Wyndham, would be considered enviable by any young lady and her marriage minded mama, but when you've been engaged to said duke practically from birth and have reached the age of one and twenty without being married people begin to feel sorry for you. Amelia doesn't know much about her fiance, they're practically strangers even after all these years, and has been never bothered by her fiance's lack of attention until she begins receiving pitying glances from the very ladies who should be envying her. She begins to wonder if her fiance even knows she's alive. When he begins acting strangely, not his usually stiff and upright self, and lets his guard down a bit, she begins to realize that she might just like him ... maybe even love him. Just as she's coming to the realization that she might be very happy married to Thomas, things begin to unravel and she finds that marrying the Duke of Wyndham might just mean losing the man she loves.
Thomas Cavendish, Duke of Wyndham, knows he will have to marry his long-time fiance soon, but surely it couldn't hurt anything to put it off just a little longer? When she behaves unexpectedly at a party, he gets a chance to speak with her alone, and finds that she's a bit more interesting than he ever thought possible. If an unknown cousin hadn't shown up all of a sudden to turn his world upside down, things might be going quite well. Finding out that a long dead uncle, older brother to the previous duke, married shortly before he died, leaving behind a pregnant wife who later died giving birth to Jack Audley-Cavendish and that he, not Thomas, might be the real Duke of Wyndham would be enough to send any man in to a tail spin. Thomas has an identity crisis of major proportions. All his life he's been taught and trained to be the Duke of Wyndham and if he isn't that, then who is he? What will his life become? He finds that Amelia is a good companion to him during this turmoil, but what good does falling in love with her do when she's contracted to marry the Duke of Wyndham regardless of what man bears that title?
This book is a sequel to The Lost Duke of Wyndham and, while the book can stand alone, I strongly suggest reading the first book before you read this one. I found it odd to read a sequel that basically relives the events of the first book, only through the eyes of what was originally a secondary couple. It's happened a time or two where I'm reading a book and this secondary pairing catches my attention and I wonder what's going on with them. Usually this happens when the pairing is slated for a book of their own, but I've never seen it done this way. At times I've wondered what was going on in the heads of other characters during a story and this kind of gave me that. In the first book, I though that Thomas was a real uptight tool and in the second you find out that he is, in fact, kind of an uptight tool, but there is more to him than that. I liked him a lot better once I got a look at things from his perspective. I remember that, in the first book, Amelia really annoyed me with how docile she seemed through the whole thing. Here are her father and her fiance telling her she has to marry a total stranger if he does turn out to be the legitimate Duke of Wyndham and she doesn't really say anything about it. She looks like a weak, hand-wringing ninny. You get to see her in a better light here, though I still think she could have spoken up for herself sooner. She picks up a real backbone by the end of it, though and I like that.
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