One Night for Seduction by Erica Ridley

How to Win a Wager and a Wife

The Duke of Colehaven is not one to pass up a wager, and he hasn’t lost one in 10 years. For this wager, he has to find a husband for the ward of one of his good friends. She has been called unmarriageable. Diana is a contented bluestocking spinster who wants nothing to do with marriage, as she doesn’t want to be controlled by any man. She has a great appreciation of numbers and lives a double life acting as if she were a government inspector. She goes to businesses and makes sure that they are using proper weights and measures so they don’t cheat the customers…or themselves!

Will the Duke be able to find a man willing to marry this woman? Will he be able to convince Diana that she should marry?

I found this to be a delightfully written book. There is a lot of humor, a lot of intelligence (and some interesting chess games!), and a lot of witty or telling banter between characters. The characters in this book are three dimensional–both the leads and the secondary characters. Diana is a fantastic heroine. She’s very smart, surprisingly funny, and knows her own mind. To hear her go on about mathematics and weights and measures was more amusing than it sounds. She’s very independent and believes in reciprocity between men and women in all things. Cole’s a great character as well. He, too, is not interested in marrying; he has very specific ideas about what his proper duchess should be like, and he hasn’t met her yet. He never expected to be the duke, so he treats people better than most others of his station. As Diana says, he is nice. I loved watching his relationship with his sister, Felicity. She is an excellent character in her own right, and brother and sister interacted well in a way that seemed natural between loving siblings.

If you enjoy well-written Regency with a little bit of humor and a bluestocking heroine, you might enjoy this book.