Now he’s home, looking for an embezzler in the family business, and his mother is looking for a woman suitable for marriage to her son. He married and fathered two children before the death of his wife. He was eventually sold into slavery to a Bedoin chieftan.

Wynter, you see, ran away from home at the age of 15 when his father died. While he presents himself as a barbarian lacking in wits and grace, he’s got a mind like a steel trap, and he’s got the number of most everyone he meets. It’s not his blond good looks and buff bod that concern her it’s his bare feet, his Pasha-style clothing, his manner of speech, and his barbaric bemusement at English ways of the world. What she doesn’t count on is the children’s father – Lord Wynter Ruskin. When Lady Charlotte Dalrumple is hired as governess for the grandchildren of Adorna, Viscountess Ruskin, she hopes this will be a long-term engagement which will allow her some measure of peace and the chance for the scandal surrounding her name to disappear. As for this reviewer, what can I say? Although I think the author’s characterization of the hero was inconsistent, I did like him, and I liked the book. And a romance where a bodice is actually ripped? Hah! Somehow, though, Christina Dodd managed to create a fast-paced, darkly humorous romance featuring a hero many may find impossible to like. Before reading Rules of Surrender, I’d have never thought it possible to enjoy a “Sheik on the Thames” romance.

Rules of Surrender by Christina Dodd