Comes the Dawn

This competent no-brainer from Skye (Come the Night) is the second book in her sensual Regency trilogy about the Delamere family, whose ``wealth was beyond measuring and their eccentricities beyond numbering.'' Heiress India Delamere, daughter of the Duke of Devonham, secretly marries Devlyn Carlisle, 12th Earl of Thornwood--a heartbreaker from a chilly dysfunctional family--just before the battle of Waterloo. India loses their baby in the aftermath of the horrible battle and, believing her husband dead, returns to London to get on with her life. What a shock when a battle-scarred Dev reappears on the night of her gala introduction to society. Though he claims to remember nothing and no one, including his titian-haired wife, he is really on a secret mission for the Duke of Wellington to recover a cache of French diamonds that might put Napoleon back on the throne. And far from forgetting his reckless vixen, he fights constantly to keep his hands off her body. India is one of a new breed of independent heroines: she's been trained in a sort of Regency martial art that Jane Austen never heard of, and she can take care of herself, up to a point. Tumultuously, India and Dev sort out their relationship, rescue the diamonds and protect Dev's three wards (one of whom makes regular contact with the spirit world) in an uninspired but pleasant fashion. (Sept.)