Wed Him Before You Bed Him is book six in Sabrina Jeffries’ School For Heiresses series, and, I thought, the final book in the series. However, after reading the book, there are new characters and hints that there may be two more books, which is exciting because book six definitely lived up to the hype.

Wed Him Before You Bed Him is the end of the story between Mrs. Charlotte Harris and the unknown “Cousin Michael,” her benefactor who helped her start her school, that began at the beginning of each chapter in book one of the series. I won’t be giving anything away by mentioning that Cousin Michael is David Masters, Viscount Kirkwood, because the reader learns this on page three, though Jeffries did a good job hiding his identity up to that point. However, it is the fact that Charlotte does not know of David’s alter-identity throughout most of the novel, as well as the past history between them, that creates the delicious tension that moves the story along.

Eighteen years before the current story, Charlotte’s and David’s fathers attempted to arrange a marriage between them. They courted for a week, fell in love, and then because of Charlotte mistaking David’s brother for David (whom she saw romancing a maid), she publicly humiliated him by sending a letter to the paper that condemned him of “a heart as fickle and deadly as the waters of the Thames.” Ironically, Charlotte did not mean for the letter to reach the paper, but David privately. Due to her father’s anger over turning the marriage arrangement into a disaster, Charlotte runs away and marries Captain Harris, who happened to show up and offered to elope with her just moments after she narrowly escapes her father’s wrath. It is not a satisfying marriage for Charlotte, but Captain Harris dies after a few years, at a duel, and she is once again free. It is then that she sets up her boarding school for heiresses.

David returns to her life after the death of his wife, who happens to be an heiress he met through Charlotte’s school. He brings her a document stating that his wife had bequeathed the school thirty thousand pounds in order to build a new building and name it after herself. Charlotte is skeptical because she knows David’s wife hated her time at the school, but more concerned about David’s pressure for her to move the school from the current property in order to build this new school building, and what other possible motives he has for returning to her life.

Shaken by her encounter with the ghosts of her past, Charlotte stood at her office window watching David ride off in his carriage. He had not changed. He was still as aggressive and bold as ever.

She rather liked that about him.

In recent years, she had grown used to making men dance to her tune. From the moment she had established this school, she had sworn that no man would ever bully her as Papa had done.  No man would ever use her for his own purposes as her late husband had done. In her little domain, she was in control.

Even Cousin Michael had respected her boundaries. It had been wonderful to have a friendship with a man who knew the difference between dictating and advising, whose very anonymity made it easy for her to talk honestly with him. And to keep at a distance.

David had never kept her at a distance — until she’d mailed that stupid letter that had cut them off forever.

The novel is intermixed with the rekindling of a romance between Charlotte and David, while he continues to hide the fact that he is Cousin Michael because of nefarious intentions when he first began the charade, and the shocking revelation that David’s wife may have been murdered and an investigation into who might have done it. Jefferies has outdone herself with this book, and it is by far the best of the six in the series. Though most novels whose main characters have known each other prior to the novel do not bring about the proper level of tension between the characters, Wed Him Before You Bed Him does, by having the hero keep a large secret from the heroine throughout the majority of the story. Jefferies accomplishes what other authors have attempted with her “lost love” theme and succeeds in ways those other authors did not. This was an excellent book and I highly recommend it, even if you have not read the first five books.

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