Lord of Scoundrels

Jessica Trent travels to Paris with a single aim: to pull her weak-willed half-brother away from Sebastian Ballister, the Marquess of Dain. Dain is a huge, ill-tempered rake with a scandalous name, and society calls him Beelzebub. Jessica expects to despise him.

She does not back down. When Dain insults her, she answers in kind, and she soon sees there is a man behind the monstrous reputation. Dain has always believed he is the beast everyone says he is. Her independence and her refusal to be frightened of him make him furious, and they also draw him in.

Their quarrels carry on from Paris to a country house party and grow into an entanglement neither of them planned. Dain has to face the self-loathing behind his hard exterior. Jessica has to decide whether she can love a man who does not think himself worth loving.

This is a historical romance built on sharp, combative dialogue, with a comic edge to the verbal duels. The hero is unusually vulnerable and aware of his own flaws, and the story is widely regarded as a classic of the genre.