The sexual pull between the two is palpable and the air fairly crackles around them. It is the first of several highly public encounters between the two which titillates the gossip columns and leaves our couple hot and bothered. He winds up flat on his posterior after a well-timed blow from Lydia. Lydia and Vere meet when she is rescuing a young girl from a procuress and Vere sticks his big, bombastic nose into the scuffle. She also writes, under a pseudonym, a wildly popular romantic adventure serial novel for The Argus which has all of London holding its collective breath awaiting the next installment. She is a 6′ Amazon, a “scribbler” – an investigative reporter – for the magazine The Argus for which she writes exposés on London’s seamier side, usually decrying the exploitation of women and children. Lydia Grenville is every bit as notorious as Vere. Vere’s already larger-than-life persona has taken on a dangerous fatalism since attaining the title and it isn’t hard to imagine him eventually winding up dead in a ditch somewhere.

Vere has recently become the Duke of Ainswood through a series of very painful family deaths, including that of the previous duke, Vere’s nine year old cousin. The large, sprawling Mallory clan throws out a real hellion – an arrogant, rabble-rousing, selfish troublemaker (Loretta Chase calls him one of her “Regency Cowboys”) – at least once every generation and this one’s is the 6’4″ giant, Vere Mallory.

The AAR review for The Last Hellion, written when it was released 10 years ago, is a C, and I’m pleased that the book’s reissue has given me the opportunity to write the DIK review I feel it so richly deserves.

Loretta Chase’s Lord of Scoundrels is an annual reread for me, and, when I close the book with a big smile on my face, I automatically reach for The Last Hellion, whose hero is the drunk Dain fights at the inn on his wedding night.

The Last Hellion by Loretta Chase