The Mysterious Miss M by Diane Gaston

The Mysterious Miss M is a living male fantasy - alluring, sensual, masked. But when Lord Devlin Steele finds himself responsible for her - and her child - he comes to know the real Maddy: the loving, passionate woman who drives away the nightmares of the Waterloo battlefield.

But this aristocratic soldier can’t support his new family. He’ll only inherit his fortune on marriage to a suitable lady - and Maddy is far from suitable. With the dangers of London’s underworld closing in, how can he protect the woman he has come to love?

I have only read one other Diane Gaston book, but I am well and truly on the path to fangirl status!

Before going off to battle, Lord Devlin Steele wins time with the beautiful prostitute known as the Mysterious Miss M. Memories of their encounter sustain him throughout his time as a soldier. What he doesn't realise is that her memories of him are sustaining her through her own unhappy life.

When he finds her again, he takes responsibility for looking after Maddy, her daughter, and Maddy's friend, even though he really can't afford to, and really doesn't have the space. Devlin will eventually come into quite a lot of money and property, but at this time it is held in trust by her older brother, who will only release the money when Devlin has agreed to marry a suitable young lady of the ton, even as he knows that he is falling desperately in love with Maddie.

Just as in A Reputable Rake, the characters were well developed, complex and unusual, but there are two things that stopped it from being a perfect read for me. One was the way that Devlin just completely accepted responsibility for Madeleine, Linnette and Sophie, and that it was so total and rapid, without even much consideration of the fact that Madeleine was an ex prostitute. The second was that the bad guys were pretty two dimensional, especially in Lord Farley's case (Lord Farley was Maddie's owner before she became Devlin's responsibility!).

The secondary love stories featuring Maddie's companion Sophie, and also Devlin's brother and sister-in-law were both really good as well!

Overall though, this was a really fun read, and I will definitely be reading more from Gaston! By the way, I got this in a two for one book which also included The Captain's Lady by Margaret McPhee, and there will be a review coming for that one shortly!

Rating 4.5/5

A Reputable Rake by Dianne Gaston

Cyprian Sloane's reputation is of the very worst. A gambler, smuggler, rake and a spy, he now faces the greatest challenge of all - respectability. He will force society to accept him. Nothing with stand in his way!

But then he meets Morgana Hart whose caring nature thrusts her into the company of ladies of the night and risks a scandal that will destroy them both. To become a gentleman Cyprian must sacrifice the lady. Or is there a way for the rake to save them both.

As soon as I saw this cover last year, I wanted this book! Couldn't care less if the hair or the costume was wrong...or anything else for that matter, I just knew that I wanted to read it! Unfortunately, this wasn't the book cover that I had (more on that later!), so luckily I liked what was between the covers as well as what was on the cover!

Cyprian Sloan has a well developed reputation as a rakehell, gambler and smuggler. Some of those labels may be well deserved but others were labels that were earned during his time as a spy for the Crown. Now, his days of spying for the Crown are over, and now that he has a nice fortune set aside, it is time to change his ways and become a respectable man about town. That, of course, means that he must also find himself a wife, and he knows just the girl. It also means that if there is any opportunity to cause his estranged father grief, then he will take advantage of that as well.

Unfortunately, after saving a group of ladies in distress in the park, he comes to know the young lady's cousin, Miss Morgana Hart. Now Miss Hart may have been practically ignored by the men of the ton, but Cyprian recognises straight away that she is a very uncommon woman - one who is above the small talk about the weather that seems to dominate every drawing room, who is willing to take a risk, a woman of passion perhaps.

As a result of the set-to in the park, which occurred as one of her servants had decided to run away to become a prostitute, Morgana decides that in order to save her servant that she must teach her to become a courtesan, to at least provide her with some better life than a young girl could expect on the harsh streets of London. Cyprian once again becomes involved when he has to save her from another difficult situation.

To Cyprian's horror, he finds that his agent/servant has managed to procure him a lovely London home....right next door to Morgana Hart. Once he figures out what she is up to, he is extremely concerned that it will cause damage to his own reputation to be living next to her, let alone what will happen to both of them should anyone figure out what is going on. And yet, he cannot stay away and is soon visiting on a regular basis, ostensibly as a dance partner for the young ladies, but in truth to see Morgana as well.

Adventure, danger and love follow as the young ladies make their debuts (albeit masked), with varied results and Cyprian and Morgana fall in love.

I really loved Cyprian. He was just the right mix of rake and man of honour, finding himself drawn into a situation that he could well have done without, and drawn to a woman he found irresistibly attractive.

Morgana was good too. Whilst there were probably some things that she did throughout the story that may have qualified her as almost TSTL, she did them for the right reasons, and with her heart in the right place.

All of the secondary characters were well rounded and played integral roles in the story. I particularly liked Cyprian's nephew as he provided a nice counter balance against his father and brother who hated Cyprian with a passion. Even Cyprian's name was a reflection of the passion with which he hated Cyprian, who may have been his wife's son, but was certainly no seed of the Earls!

I am pretty sure that I have never read of a heroine setting up a courtesan's school before, so Diane Gaston deserves kudos for originality at the very least. I had never read anything by her before, but I have added all of her books to my list after reading this one.

I did say that I would come back to the book cover thing! It appears as though there are quite a few Harlequin Historicals that are being released in two book volumes here in a series called Quills, so the book I actually got from the library had the cover shown to the right. I will be reviewing the other book that was included, The Puritan Bride by Anne O'Brien, in due course. Other authors to be given the Quills treatment who I have wanted to read include Michelle Styles and Terri Brisbin.

Rating 4/5