{Intriguing Historical Review} Tempting the Earl by @RachaelMiles

Tempting the Earl (The Muses' Salon, #3) by Rachael Miles
Published by Zebra Shout on October 25th 2016
Pages: 352
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A DOUBLE LIFE

Olivia Walgrave is finished with being a countess. Writing under a pen name, her controversial column for the scandal sheets provides her with some income and far more excitement than managing a country estate. Besides, in the three years since the wars have ended, her dashing husband hasn’t spent one night under their roof. So Olivia has prepared a plan, and an annulment. All she needs is his consent…

Harrison Walgrave, the Earl of Levesford, let his father coerce him into marriage, but his true devotion is to his Parliamentary career—and his secret work for the Home Office. Yet now, with freedom in his grasp, he finds he cannot so easily release his wife. Seeing her stirs a hunger no other woman has reached. A distraction now, when he is a breath away from revealing a ring of traitors, could be deadly. Still, wherever his investigations lead, the thought of Olivia lingers. It might be obsession. It might be treason. But the only way to escape the temptation is to succumb…

I received Tempting the Earl (The Muses' Salon, #3) for free. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.

I have come to believe that the more a couple has to endure, the eventual bliss is so much sweeter. With the first two books in Rachael Miles’ The Muses’ Salon Series, as a reader I absorbed every word with vigor. Now that Miles has given us Harrison and Olivia’s story, my hunger for the continued elements of the storyline have increased tenfold.

In this novel, I was given a story that some might find difficult to read. Olivia, abandoned by her father at age five, became a ward of some sort to Roderick Walgrave, Earl of Levesford. He paid for her schooling and helped her when she ultimately went to work for the Home Office. Due to tragedy of their own, Roderick Walgrave lost his entire family except his one son, Harrison. When it came time for Roderick to take hold of his son’s future, her forced him into marriage with Olivia. The lady spy in turn needed to reinvent herself after a horrid assignment where a serial killer was murdered by her hand. The couple spend only two weeks as husband and wife before Harrison left to fight in the war. Six years fly by, Roderick has died three years prior and still Harrison has not come home to be with the wife he never wanted.

This novel gave me the equal amounts of chicanery and passion that I adore. Olivia and Harrison both work for the same people yet they have no idea. They are each working separately to achieve the same goals, yet both are in mortal danger. Olivia’s life is threatened more than once where as Harrison’s heart is befuddled beyond comprehension. The instant spark whenever the two are near doesn’t help matters at all. Their passion plays a beautiful melody while the numerous villains make attempts to destroy them.

Once I reached the last page, which at some points I thought would never come, I still wanted more. More of all of them and to pull at the thread of a villain who has been featured since the first novel in the series. As soon as the next book in the series is released, you know I will be savoring every page as much as I did this one.

This can be read as a stand alone, but the first two books in the series are so enjoyable, I recommend reading Jilting the Duke (Book 1) and Chasing the Heiress (Book 2).