Wicked Intentions by Elizabeth Hoyt

Widow Temperance Dews has lived and worked in St. Giles ever since her husband died, helping her brother Winter to run an orphanage in one of London's worst slums. One night, chance makes her cross paths with Lazarus Huntington, Lord Caire and changes her life forever.

Temperance is in great need of money for her orphanage and Caire comes with an interesting proposition: Temperance helps him to find his way around St. Giles and he'll help her find a patron for the orphanage. No one thinks is a good idea, but Temperance goes ahead anyway, not only because she needs the money but because there is something about Lord Caire that taunts her and makes her want to stay close to him.

Lord Caire is equally affected by Temperance, finding her emotions fascinating, especially since he's convinced he can't feel anything. But he is obsessed with finding who killed his latest mistress, who was murdered in quite a gruesome way in St. Giles, which is also a great excuse to keep Temperance close.

Okay, so I love Elizabeth Hoyt, I do, but I didn't love this book. I'm sorry to say I didn't feel that instant connection with Temperance or Caire, it was an entraining story but I never connected with the characters. I couldn't understand Temperance sometimes, and Caire is quite right when he calls her a martyr, she does have martyr-like tendencies. And the same thing happened with Caire, he's so obsessed but I never felt there was anything driving him so it was all a bit flat to me.

And there is also a rather convoluted sub-plot regarding Temperances younger sister Silence.

The setting is awesome and Mrs. Hoyt writing is good, but Wicked Intentions didn't do it for me because of the characters. However, I did like Lady Hero, who's going to be the heroine of the next book in the series, so I'm going to check that out.

2/3