REVIEW: Loving the Earl by Sharon Cullen

In Loving the Earl by Sharon Cullen, widowed viscountess Claire Hartford wants to have an adventure. After living a horrible life with her husband and unable to tell anyone about it, not even her brothers has made her strong. But the biggest test will be to go to France and then to Venice to find a lover, without her old nanny and not on the ship that her brother has booked her on so they cannot stop her.

Only as Claire is about to board the ship, her maid gets scared and runs away leaving her without a companion. She either goes through with her plan or returns home to continue being controlled. Claire knows that this may be the only chance she will have to have her adventure and control her own life and decides to board on her own. But as she is about to board, in her distraction she ends up bumping into a gentleman and makes him drop the documents he held in his hand, which then falls into the mud.

Claire doesn’t immediately recognize Lord Blythe, Nathan Ferguson her brother’s old friend. She can only hope that he doesn’t recognize her. So she is glad when he doesn’t immediately recognize her and escapes into the ship.

What Claire doesn’t know is that her brother Sebastian had already been advised of her plans and asked Nathan to look after her until she lands in Calais. But Nathan doesn’t remember Claire and believes her when upon meeting on the deck when she gives him a different name, only to have the captain approach them and call her by her real name.

Nathan was immediately attracted to Claire when she first bumped into him and couldn’t get her out of his mind. Meeting her on deck was a gift to him, but finding out her identity was not. Because he promised to keep her safe and his friend would not appreciate if Nathan used Claire the way he tends to do with all women.

At first Nathan plans to just get her to her lodgings in Calais and continuing on his own journey. But there seems to be some lies going about her stories, and he cannot honestly just walk away until he knows that she is safe at her destination.

Good thing that he stuck around, because she soon finds a man who is supposedly going to help her with her trunks but is actually a thief and thanks to Nathan he couldn’t get away with anything. Too bad that the first thief she met at the port took off with her bag with the most important documents she needed on her travels.

But as Nathan soon discovers, Claire is hiding more than she is telling, and the first lie is about her maid being with her, and then finding her sneaking out of the inn. Thank God that he follows her, because trouble seems to follow her and soon she finds herself in more trouble with more thieves.

Traveling together to get to their destination and keeping a close eye on her is not an easy task. Nathan will have to keep his wits about himself. But staying that close together during long periods of time will make the feelings they are trying to hide become more pronounced. And Claire’s tendency to sleep on him is awakening a need in him to have her close to him at all times. But trouble is not only following Claire for there is someone out to hurt Nathan too before he discovers the truth about his father’s death.

For a fun, sweet, oh so hot and very entertaining read, don’t miss Loving the Earl by Sharon Cullen.

Book Info:

November 11th 2013 by Loveswept

In Sharon Cullen’s sizzling novel of scandal and seduction, a headstrong beauty is pursued across Europe by London’s most notorious rake.

Having vowed never to wed again, widowed viscountess Claire Hartford is about to do the unthinkable: travel unaccompanied across the continent in search of a lover. Her adventure begins sooner than expected, when she meets a magnificent cloaked stranger on her ship’s gangplank. He is Lord Blythe, a man whispered about in London’s ballrooms and drawing rooms, a scandalous rogue hell-bent on seduction.

Nathan Ferguson curses the day he agreed to look out for his best friend’s wayward sister. The charismatic earl is traveling to Paris to uncover the truth behind his father’s death, but his desire for Claire threatens to be his undoing. From France to Italy, on a journey of passionate discovery and danger, Nathan is honor-bound to protect her—from himself most of all. What can he offer Claire? Only love, as he sets out to prove to the woman of his dreams that she belongs to him—body, heart, and soul.