For her seventh installment of the Bastion Club series, Stephanie Laurens, in The Edge of Desire, tells the story of Christian Allardyce, the Marquess of Dearne, and his long-lost love Lady Letitia Randall. Like the previous six novels in the series, the hero, Christian, has been away for the past ten years, a spy for England in France during the Napoleonic Wars. He returns, expecting that his love, Letitia, has waited for him, only to discover she married years before.

The story opens two years later with Letitia begging Christian for a favor, that he clear the name of her brother, who has been accused of murdering her husband (conveniently for this love story to progress) and fled London. As Christian and Letitia attempt to discover the real murderer, their love is rekindled and it becomes apparent to them that they are meant to be together. However, they must come to understand their collective past, and the choices each made while they were away from each other, before they are able to live happily ever after.

The story Laurens creates has too many players. The concept of a dead husband, a suspected brother, and the heroine needing the hero’s help to unravel the mystery, would be easy enough for the reader to understand. Laurens, however, complicates everything when she adds a secret partnership between Letitia’s dead husband and two other men from his past. The excitement the reader feels from discovering who Letitia’s husband really had been in life and whether or not the ton, those of the upper echelons of British society who made and enforced popular societal rules, will also find out, is overshadowed by the complication of his two partners, and the characters constantly having to meet with them, meet with the six other Bastion Club members who were assisting in the search for Letitia’s brother, and then throwing in romantic encounters for good measure.

Laurens takes for granted the fact that Christian and Letitia had previously been lovers, and there is no rising excitement as their relationship develops. My favorite part of any romance novel is the overwhelming sexual tension, when written well, that permeates the lives of the characters as they interact and attempt to go about their lives. I find I can utterly escape into their world, their story, their lives. Occasionally, an author can write a romance novel without that sexual tension that still draws me so completely into the characters’ world. Unfortunately, the murder story in this novel was too convoluted to make up for the lack of drama expected in the development of the love story.

The Edge of Desire was simply okay compared to the previous novels in the series. The Bastion Club series focuses on a group of men who are set to find their own wives instead of being pressured into marriage by family or the ton. The premise is unique because most historical romance novels are centered around a strong woman who sets out to find a husband or happens into a relationship she was not expecting. I am still looking forward to the final installment of the Bastion Club series, due in July 2009. I am seven novels invested, and can only hope that the final novel will close the series with all the excitement and drama with which the series began.

Romancing History is published every other Thursday.

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