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Proof by Seduction

by Courtney Milan

reviewed by Valarie Pelissero

January 2010, 352 pages, Publisher: HQN, ISBN: 0373774397

They were just harmless lies. For twelve years Madame Esmerelda, aka Jenny Keeble, has been telling her clients exactly what they wanted to hear. There was no harm in that, because after all, everyone lies. But when a young man comes to her and asks her why he should continue living Jenny lies like she has never lied before. It seemed like such an easy thing to do telling Ned Carhart that she sees him becoming a man and living a long and happy life, free of the black despair that sent him to her door.

That was two years ago and Jenny even thought to call Ned her friend, her only friend actually, until the day he arrives on her doorstop with his cousin Gareth, the Marquess of Blakely. Gareth has come to prove that Madame Esmerelda is a fraud and free his cousin from her larcenous clutches. As a scientist, for Gareth everything is broken down into theories that can be proved or disproved, concluding with scientific fact. In the case of Madame Esmerelda to prove that she is a fraud he will ask her to predict who Ned (his only heir) will marry and when she fails his theory will be fact and Ned will be out from under her control.

What Gareth doesn't count on is that Madame Esmerelda is just as clever as he is. When tasked to predict Ned's future Madame Esmerelda predicts that the spirits have shown her Gareth's future bride and she tells him he must complete three tasks before proposing. 1. He must carve her an elephant and present it to his prospective bride. 2. He must write a song singing Ned's praises, and publicly sing it. 3. He must make friends with his secretary. Of course the second and third tasks come to Jenny as she spends more time in Gareth's company and learns what an an ass he is. As Gareth sets out to conquer all of these tasks he discovers that he is human after all and not the automaton his grandfather raised him to be.

Proof by Seduction by Courtney Milan is a stunning debut book. It should really be called "Dance of Seduction" because the dance that Jenny and Gareth engage in as they try to outwit one another is hilarious and perfectly choreographed. Gareth sees right to Jenny's soul just as Jenny can see right to Gareth's as they each ferret out how lonely the other one is. Gareth hides his loneliness behind a wall of icy disdain, while Jenny hides behind the mask of Madame Esmerelda becoming the untouchable fortune teller. The two are a perfect couple as they discover the solace they can find in each other. Is everything perfect once they come together? Of course not. Gareth still hurts Jenny quite often because he is just so out of touch with everything and everyone, which gave me a reason to root for the two of them as a couple.

Jenny is a bit of a mystery, and not the standard virginal young miss readers are so used to in our Regencies, and I found that I liked that. The reader would get these small glimpses into Jenny's past where she would just say, “I stopped being good,” but we never got more than that. When Gareth tracks down the headmistress of her school looking for answers to who Jenny was the reader gets vague statements of her misbehaviors. We also never learn who Jenny's parents were, who paid for her education, nor exactly what she did when she stopped being good, which I actually found refreshing because I got to make up my own stories of her past. Normally the reader gets pages upon pages of details of the heroine's past as well as the hero's, not so here. We did get loads of information about Gareth, but not much about Jenny, yet despite this I never felt like I was missing anything. Ms. Milan did such a wonderful job of showing me who Jenny is in the present that I didn't need her past to fill in the blanks.

The ending was sublime and the teaser we get of Ned's story makes me want his book, now, now, now! Ms. Milan has a bright future ahead of her in the wonderful world of romance and I can't wait to read more offerings by her. Run, don't walk to pick up your copy of Proof by Seduction when it hits the shelves.