Merely Married

Two outrageous and original characters lock horns, with unpredictable results right up to the happy ending, as Coughlin (Lord Savage) scores with another delightful Regency romance. When a drunken libertine, the Duke of Raven, comes across a well-bred young lady fallen deathly ill en route to London, he impulsively seizes on a scheme suggested by a friend. By marrying her and becoming a widower, he can use his feigned grief to free him from the annoying demands of society. He has no scruples about tricking a semi-conscious woman into marrying him, but fate, naturally, has his comeuppance in store. Leah not only recovers, she decides to take advantage of her unexpected rise in society to further a scheme of her own, and from there on, it's a game of point-counterpoint. Although the marriage of convenience is a convention of the genre, Coughlin manages to surprise the reader at every turn while keeping her protagonists both believable and appealing. (Oct.)