The Devil's Heiress

Clarissa Greystone has inherited a fortune from a deeply unpleasant nobleman, which makes her the target of every fortune hunter in England. When the new Lord Deveril sends his heir, George Hawkinville, to court her, Clarissa suspects his motives correctly. Hawk does need her money, inherited through tangled circumstances that force him to recover a pledged sum. But as a Napoleonic spy ring draws them together in genuine danger, the mercenary calculation on both sides gives way to something neither anticipated.

Simon Prebble narrates Jo Beverley's Regency romances with a cultivated English ease that suits the period without sounding affected. His ability to voice the male protagonist's evolving moral position is particularly strong here: Hawk begins as someone the reader should distrust and Prebble navigates the character's gradual transformation with appropriate subtlety. The audiobook benefits from the genre's pleasure in propriety being undone, which Prebble delivers with dry wit.