The Dance of Desire (Muses of Scandal series)

Written by Delphine Ross
Review by Kate Braithwaite

When Angela Bartham agrees to a marriage of convenience with her erstwhile best friend, the Earl of Sutherland, known as Sunny, her motive is to save her family from scandal. But in doing so, she puts herself in difficulty. Angela must spend months in seclusion with Sunny in his Parisian chateau, and her new husband is bristling with anger over the way she rejected his suit so forcefully only six months earlier. He’s become the Beast to her Beauty, and it will require many ups and downs – including a duel, a blackmail plot, a secret passage, and even a passel of kittens – before readers will discover whether Angela gets the fairytale-ending she surely deserves.

Ross has a great gift with dialogue and the skill to show how words can wound. Sunny and Angela’s verbal sparring shows how easy it is to hurt those we love and hard it can be to understand one’s own feelings, far less share them. Both main characters grow throughout the story, and secondary characters – family, friends, and a dastardly journalist – throw enough curveballs in the path of true love to keep the pages quickly turning. An enjoyable second outing for the Muses of Scandal series.