The Pride of Lions

Canham (The Last Arrow) delivers standard, dependable bodice-ripping in this first volume of the two-part romance of British aristocrat Catherine Ashbrooke and Scottish lordling Alexander Cameron, who marries her in a shotgun wedding after they are caught kissing on her father's terrace. Alex has been posing as Raefer Montgomery, a wealthy London merchant, but beneath his lace jabot beats the heart of a true Highlander. He is the legendary Camshroinaich Dubh (Dark Cameron), returned from the Continent to help in the fight for Bonnie Prince Charlie and the Jacobite cause. It's one of the great pleasures of romance novels that one can feast on the combination of ecstatic and explicit sex play, a discussion of the political movements of 1745, and a historically correct description of female underwear, catalogued at the same time the hero is removing it. (Nov.)