Of course, this is a fairly dastardly ultimatum to give, but, frankly, I took it as little more than an excuse to get to the banging already. However, having been burned once, he wants to make sure of the eventual outcome and thus delivers an ultimatum along the lines of: give up your maidenhead to me today so that you are thoroughly compromised and have to go through with the wedding and the engagement is back on.

After some understandable missteps in conversation, Helen makes it clear that she does want to marry Rhys and he believes her. Helen, despite her innate shyness, decides to go after what she wants and, when Kathleen and Devon are away getting married, she visits Rhys at his store, alone (the scandal!). Marrying Winterborne picks up immediately after where Cold-Hearted Rake left off (spoiler alert) Kathleen had taken it upon herself to break Helen’s and Rhys’s engagement on Helen’s behalf – Rhys was hurt and angry and Helen was, to say the least, greatly dismayed. The romance between Lady Helen Ravenel and department store magnate Rhys Winterborne begins in that book and the history therein adds important backstory to their romance. While I think it’s possible to enjoy Marrying Winterborne as a stand-alone romance, I do recommend listening to Cold-Hearted Rake first. It was also my first experience of listening to Mary Jane Wells’ narration and it was such a joy I called dibs on Marrying Winterborne as soon as I knew the release date. Admittedly, it was from a very small sample – I had only tried two other historicals by Kleypas before then but had been underwhelmed by them. I had my first Lisa Kleypas historical success last year with Cold-Hearted Rake.

Marrying winterborne by lisa kleypas