A Lady's Secret - Jo Beverley

When Robin Fitzvitry, the fun-loving Earl of Huntersdown, encounters a cursing nun in a French inn, he can't resist the mystery. He offers to help Sister Immaculata reach England, expecting amusement on the tedious journey home from Versailles.

Petre d'Avernio is not exactly a nun, though she has spent years in an Italian convent with her mother, whose death has left her in danger. She must find the only person who might protect her-her true father, an English lord who does not know she exists. The gorgeous earl Robin Fitzvitry will be a dangerous ally, but she's glimpsed her pursuers and must race to the coast. She will resist him, use him, and eventually escape him with her virtue and secrets intact-she hopes.

After reading a few of Beverley’s Company of Rogue’s books last month I decided to start this latest installment in the Malloreen series.

It is a light and nice read about a nun on the run and the nobleman who helps her. Of course, Petra is not really a nun but she is on the run from an Italian duke who wants her to be his mistress. When we meet her, she is decided to travel to England in search of the father she never knew, having been raised by her mother and acknowledged by her mother’s husband.

I did like that it started in a French setting and with a Italian heroine, then it goes on as an entertaining road romance, it has a bit of adventure and mystery and it has the main characters falling in love. I thought it was entertaining but ultimately there’s nothing very original and since I’m writing the review more than two weeks after I read it I must admit that I’ve forgotten some of the details.

I did like it better once the heroine reaches her father because he is a well known Beverley character but then the end feels a bit like too neatly wrapped up. I just wish the Malloreens could have had a more active part in the book. Still, it was a good read.

Grade: 4/5