The Diamond and the Duke (All the Duke’s Sins)
Lady Eleanor “Ellie” Balfour has loved Wesley Audley, illegitimate son of the Duke of Bentley, ever since he saw her practicing swordplay on her family’s Leeds estate as a teenager. He won her heart with his honesty, a refreshing change from her older brothers’ platitudes and her late father’s physical cruelty. Several years later, Captain Audley returns from the Belgian battlefields injured and broken, not realizing that the lovingly supportive letters he’d received overseas had secretly been penned by Ellie, rather than the old girlfriend whose name Ellie had carefully signed. When Ellie looks at Wesley, she sees a kindred spirit and strives to heal him, if only he can bring his walls down. In truth, she’s in desperate need of healing herself.
This emotionally rich mixture of Beauty and the Beast, Cyrano, and Bridgerton-style saga, set in the early 19th century, offers a multiplicity of romance tropes, which feels overcrowded at times, especially when the fake-relationship subplot appears. But Caldwell strikes a good balance between the serious theme of abuse recovery and the flirtatious hubbub of a pre-Regency London Season, and the couple’s visit to a female bonesetter adds originality. It’s a complicated road, but these wounded characters well deserve their happy ending.
