The Temptation of the Night Jasmine

I decided to choose a book I've been saving for a special occasion to end my year's reading, so I plucked The Temptation of the Night Jasmine (#457) by Lauren Willig from my bookshelf where it's been patiently waiting.  It's the fifth book in her delicious Pink Carnation series (best read in order from the first book, The Secret History of the Pink Carnation.)  I realize that I'm way behind in keeping up with this series (although I own all of them, sitting temptingly on my bookshelf just where I can see them).  The question for me has always been: do I gobble them up like a handful of M&Ms as fast as Ms. Willig writes them?; or do I save them for just the right moment like a fabulous Castronovo truffle?  There's a time for each, but with this series, the delayed gratification approach seems most satisfactory.

Eloise is a modern day graduate student, searching old English archives for source materials on Napoleonic spies for her thesis.  She has settled on trying to trace and identify a successful circle of spies run by the elusive Pink Carnation.  Finding an untouched trove of papers in an English country house is like hitting a gigantic jackpot for Eloise.  The problem is not with her original English contact for the papers, the elderly Mrs. Selwick-Alderly; it's with the house's actual owner, her nephew Colin.  The stops and starts of Eloise and Colin's relationship provide the framework for the meat of the series: the adventures of various members of the Pink Carnation's circle of spies.  In The Temptation of the Night Jasmine, it centers around the return of the long absent Duke of Dovedale, Robert Landsdowne.  He's spent the last decade in India, earning a hard-won captaincy in the process.  But the murder of his mentor during the Battle of Assaye has him resigning his commission to follow the jasmine sprig-wearing Wrothan home to England, so Robert can extract his revenge on the man who betrayed his mentor and sold British secrets to the Indian Mahrattas and the French.  For Charlotte Landsdowne, the unexpected return of her cousin on Christmas Eve in the midst of a boisterous house party is the long-anticipated arrival of her knight in shining armor.  Her grandmama has arranged for a houseful of potential suitors for Charlotte's hand, but all she can see is Robert.  Needless to say, things do not go smoothly.  Robert finds himself tangled up with the infamous Hellfire Club in pursuit of Wrothan.  Charlotte in the meantime must do her duty as a maid of honor to Queen Charlotte in London.  It's her knowledge of Queen's House that will ultimately provide the key to Robert's revenge and the foiling of a dastardly plot against the British throne.  It doesn't reconcile Charlotte and Robert, however.  Will anything ever bring these two together?

Ms. Willig has earned both a degree in history and a J.D. from Harvard, so this series as well as being a crackerjack Regency era spy novel and romance, has the additional benefit of being well-researched and plausible, gilded with just the right dash of  humor.  Do I sound like a smitten fan of this series?  I am!