I did like how their relationship developed, and Sebastian’s aunt was a hoot. The dyslexia was handled REALLY well, though, and there’s a scene where Sebastian is helping her learn how to sign her name, and they translate the letter shapes into dance steps. Milly’s problems were pretty standard- shitty family, stolen dowry. I found Sebastian and his angst (and oh the angst) a lot more interesting than Milly. He goes into these duels sort of ¾ hoping they’ll finally fucking kill him already and just end this, and refusing to actually try and kill anyone else (as the challengee, he gets to pick weapons, so he usually goes for pistols so he can shoot the air and go home.) As it turns out, enemies from France are in the process of trying to get him killed, and keep instigating the duels. So Sebastian is sort of trying to make his way back into British society, but no one likes him, for obvious reasons, and the men who he tortured and interrogated (none of which he killed) keep challenging him to duels. She was raised by her aunts, and has a lovey cat named Peter. She comes from a dickish family, as all companions must, and is also dyslexic, so her dickish family thinks she’s soft in the head. Milly, our heroine, is Sebastian’s aunt’s companion. He has a singular talent for interrogation, and was given a subset of “English officers who were captured out of uniform” to interrogate by any means necessary. He was there with his mother, who was dying of some unspecified ailment and needed to go back to France to….die, I guess? And she took Sebastian with her, and he got stuck and joined up with the French military in order to make a living. Claire, and also half-French, which is how he ended up in France during the Napoleonic War. This is why I was so dubious about this book- how on EARTH could Burrowes redeem Sebastian and make him hero-worthy after he tortured a previous book’s hero so horribly? Claire, who astute readers may remember as Girard, Christian’s torturer from The Captive. I was dubious about this one, I really was. I didn’t actually expect this book to be out so quick after The Captive, but here we are. Publication Info: Sourcebooks Casablanca August 5, 2014

The laird grace burrowes