Well, it’s only mid-January and I’ve already got a favorite book for 2011. Courtney Milan’s third novel for Harlequin, Unveiled, is easily one of the best books I have read in a very long time.

In the interest of full disclosure, I should admit that I also very much enjoyed Ms. Milan’s first two books, Proof by Seduction and Trial by Desire. I was probably predisposed to like Unveiled. That said, I found both of Ms. Milan’s previous offerings started off slowly, and I was a good 100 pages into each of them before I felt truly invested in the characters and the romance.

I had no such issues with Unveiled; the story and the characters gripped me right away and held onto me through a feverish three days as I tried to beg, borrow, and steal every opportunity to read it. I did not want to put it down, but seeing as how I have a life (job, kids, husband, house), sometimes I had to!

Unveiled opens with the arrival of Mr. Ash Turner at Parford Manor, primary seat of the Duke of Parford. The Turners are distant cousins of the Dalrymples, and Ash is now heir to the dukedom, having proved in Chancery that the current duke’s marriage was bigamous and his children are therefore illegitimate. Ash bears not the slightest regret for having disinherited his cousins, for there’s no love lost between the branches of the family. Moreover, when Ash was fourteen and his sister was dying, he sued the current due for help and was rudely turned away. His sister later died and Ash has held this—as well as scuffles between his younger brothers and the Dalrymple brothers at Eton—against the family ever since. He feels entirely justified in what he’s done and, moreover, is certain his efforts will finally make things right for his younger brothers, who suffered greatly when Ash left for India to make his fortune.

What Ash doesn’t take into account is the existence of a Dalrymple sister, Lady Anna Margaret. Upon being declared a bastard, Margaret has been abandoned by her fiancé and all her friends. She doesn’t much regret the loss of the fiancé, it turns out, but having been delegitimized has left her with no place in the world. Her brothers have placed an act before Parliament in an attempt to have themselves and Margaret recognized as the duke’s legitimate heirs despite their parents’ bigamous marriage, and in the hope of gaining information that can be used against Mr. Turner and in favor of their own claims, they leave Margaret behind in the guise of a nurse, tending to her gravely ill father.

Her father, by the way, is a complete and utter jackass. One of my minor complaints about the book was that I never understood why he did what he did. He was clearly aware his marriage to Margaret’s mother was bigamous, yet he entered into it anyway and then, when found out, he seemed to blame his children for their illegitimacy rather than himself. It didn’t make a whole lot of sense, but never mind. I still loved the book!

Ash lays eyes on Margaret and knows, instinctively, that he must have her. He doesn’t understand why she is cold and prickly toward him, but he treats her with a kindness and respect she ultimately can’t ignore, especially since she knows he believes her to be a mere servant. Ash, having been raised outside the peerage, has no love for the notion of class in the first place and treats everyone with such decency that Margaret begins to admire him in spite of herself and what he’s done to her and her family. As Ash reveals information that she knows her brothers could use against him in Parliament, she finds herself refusing to share it with them, both because she can’t find it in her heart to betray him when he makes her feels special and important and because she reaches the rather unpleasant realization that he’ll be a better duke than her older brother or her father.

This book, like everything I’ve read of Ms. Milan’s, is gorgeously written, and the attraction and tension between Ash and Margaret is beautifully rendered. This scene, the prelude to their first kiss, is one of my favorite interactions in the book:

“I’ve lost count of the number of times your brother has made me laugh. Chastity is far more amusing than I had anticipated.”

“Chastity,” Ash said dryly, “is far more arousing than I had anticipated.

Margaret flushed and looked over at him. She sat primly on the velvet sofa, and at his words, she rearranged her ankles beneath her. “I do believe we are straying into the improper.”

“Oh, no,” he contradicted. “We aren’t straying. I had hoped we had embarked on a deliberate voyage.”

Her slipper fell off her foot. She didn’t even seem to notice; instead, she felt about for it on the ground, her toe pointed, her ankle peeking out under the edge of her gown. He went hard, just imagining his hands following that sinuous curve of calf up her legs.

“A voyage?” she asked, her voice shaky. “But…but we can have no mutual destination.”

“It’s never about where you go, but how you get there.”

He kissed her. Hard, too; his mouth met hers with open lips, taking her with a ravenous intensity. He’d held back from her for too long, had held back this kiss, until it broke over him with all the ferocity of a summer storm. He was the lightning, striking fertile ground, the hard rain driving into a field. And if he was a bolt of energy, swift and sure, she was the thunder, a low, powerful rumble that passed through him and stood his hairs on end.

That said, Ash is truly a hero to die for. He’s assertive and confident without being a jerk, and when he sets his mind and his heart on Margaret, he’s absolutely relentless in his campaign to win her. Margaret calls him “charmingly ruthless,” and it’s an apt description. But best of all, Ash is predictably unpredictable. That is, whatever you think he’s going to do, whatever turn you think the story is going to take, Ash does something that is both completely in character and controverts your every expectation. And when it happens, you think “Well, of course, that’s what he’d do. He wouldn’t do the expected thing at all.” I absolutely loved that about him and about this book—at every turn, I was pleasantly surprised when the story went a place I didn’t anticipate yet could fully believe.

Unveiled is without a doubt my favorite of Ms. Milan’s books thus far and an all-time romance genre favorite that has earned a permanent spot on my keeper shelf.

Reviewed by: Nonny