2,5 Stars A sweeping Victorian romance of potted orchids and self-made men, Welsh interpolations and baffling charact…2,5 Stars A sweeping Victorian romance of potted orchids and self-made men, Welsh interpolations and baffling characterisations. And of spectacularly contrived plot twists.London, 1875Queuing right after Cold-Hearted Rake's epilogue, the books opens as Lady Helen Ravenel has just made up her mind about her broken engagement and her future. Shyness and class-conscious relatives notwithstanding, she wants Rhys Winterborne, a powerful Welsh businessman and former shop boy who grew up in the wrong side of London and who, through ambition and determination, now owns the world's largest department store. So she sets out to go to his office and take her chance at proposing. Rhys, on his part, left sulking and pouting only days before, sulks and pouts a few minutes more, puts up some token recalcitrance and in the span of an instant suddenly turns into a magnificently besotted and horny hero to never look back. From there on it's mostly sex, orchids, sex, "he mustn't know this implausible thing about my past or he's going to leave me!" drama, sex, orchids, quick resolution. The End.An odd, uneven book and, I'm sorry to say, with much wasted potential. The improbable bend the story took to compensate for an early concluded romance, really had me wishing all along that the author had played the introspection card instead and embarked the character-driven or the inner-conflict route. Coming from the quite disappointing Cold-Hearted Rake experience, I had higher hopes for the sequel, especially because Helen and Rhys sounded very promising as a budding secondary romance in that first instalment. The writing, reminding me of the author's older golden standards, has improved compared to book 1 and was smoother and …