What a Duke Dares by Anna Campbell

what a duke daresNarrated by Steve West

In What a Duke Dares, Camden Rothermere, future Duke of Sedgemoor is young, handsome, rich – and completely stunned when Penelope Thorne turns down his proposal of marriage. He and Pen have known each other almost all their lives, and while the Sedgemoor title has been tarnished in recent years by the very public way in which his parents’ marriage has disintegrated, it’s one of the oldest in the kingdom. Cam is determined to force the polite world to forget his parents’ serial infidelities as well as the fact that the old duke is probably not his biological father, and he lives his life by an incredibly rigid set of rules, making sure his actions are above reproach and doing everything he can to restore his family name to respectability.

Penelope – Pen – insists that she’s not the right wife for him. She has a mind of her own, a reputation for hoydenish behaviour, and her father and brothers are hardly models of propriety. Given Cam’s desire to restore his family’s reputation, she tells him he needs a wife who is beyond reproach, one who will never give him a moment’s concern or cause people to smirk behind their hands.

What she doesn’t say is that she won’t marry him because she knows he will never love her. Having watched the deterioration of his parents’ love-match, Cam disdains love and wants nothing to do with it. And Pen knows that being married to a man she’s loved all her life with no hope of a return will all but kill her.

Nine years pass, and we find Cam, now the powerful and aloof Duke of Sedgemoor, in Calais, at the deathbed of his friend and Penelope’s older brother, Peter. Peter tells Cam that Pen, who has lived on the Continent with an aunt for the past nine years, is in difficulty following her aunt’s death, and asks Cam to find her and take her back to England. Cam has no wish to become entangled with Pen and whatever escapade she has involved herself in, but he cannot refuse a dying man and agrees to do what he can.

Pen, when Cam finds her and rescues her from a group of Italian bandits at a grubby Alpine inn, is no more wishful of returning home than Cam is of escorting her there. She agrees reluctantly to his escort, not at all keen on the idea of their travelling as a married couple in order to stop tongues wagging. While their journey is not without incident, they manage to get to Calais without anyone uncovering their deception – but a disastrous Channel crossing from which they barely manage to escape with their lives puts paid to their anonymity, and Cam feels he has no alternative but to do the right thing and asks Pen to marry him – and of course, she refuses. Again.

But this time, Cam won’t take no for an answer, and insists that if Pen has no care for her reputation, then she should think about his. Pen knows she’s being manipulated, but she can’t bear the thought of Cam plunged into the scandal and gossip he’s worked so hard to avoid and finally agrees, determined to become the sort of demure, biddable duchess he wants.

Pen and Cam are very well-rounded characters who have a strong emotional connection – and there’s no denying the chemistry between them is scorching, something which narrator Steve West deals with incredibly well. I don’t normally dissect the sex scenes in audios, as one man’s meat is often another’s poison, so I’ll just say he gets right into the swing of things and that I needed a long lie down by an open window afterwards!

Pen’s insistence on trying to keep her distance – and her “secret” – from Cam goes on a little too long and becomes somewhat melodramatic as she continually bemoans the fact that he’ll never love her. Apart from that, though, she’s a great character, a woman who is unconventional without being outrageous or confrontational for the sake of it. She loves the life she has made for herself in Italy, and were it not for Cam, would have been happy to return there, continuing to live among people who foster her love of art and don’t berate her for being independently minded. Cam is an appealing hero, obviously a passionate man beneath the stern exterior of frosty control, but who struggles to learn that perhaps there is more to life than keeping a pristine reputation.

I enjoyed Pen and Cam’s story very much, but found the structure of the book a little frustrating. There’s a secondary romance involving Pen’s younger brother which, while it’s relevant to the overall plot, gets in the way of the main story in the early stages which unbalanced things somewhat. I’d be caught up in what was happening to Pen and Cam and – wham! – I was pulled out of that story and plunged into another one which was rather bland by comparison. Rather than serving to build tension, it made me want to fast-forward, which I may well have done if I hadn’t already been completely captivated by Steve West’s superb performance and deliciously sexy voice!

I haven’t listened to him before, although I know he has a fair number of audiobooks to his credit, hardly any of which – I’m sorry to say – are romances. Mr West has a deep, sonorous voice that’s very attractive and easy to listen to, and his interpretation of Cam – austere, unflappable and every inch the duke – is absolutely spot on. He’s just as good when Cam starts to fray around the edges, his clipped tones conveying a sense of barely leashed fury or frustration, depending on the situation. All his characterisations are very clearly differentiated, with each character portrayed in ways appropriate to age and station, and the narrative is performed with clarity and precision at a good pace.

Having listened to all three books in this series (the other two narrated by someone else) I was curious as to how Mr West would portray the principals of the other books, who also appear in this one. I wasn’t expecting him to have imitated the other performer; rather I wanted to hear how he would differentiate between the three principals while making them sound sufficiently different from each other and suitably attractive. He does it brilliantly. Richard (book two) is all languid grace and charm, and Jonas (book one) is gruff and no-nonsense, and there’s never any question as to which of them is speaking in the scenes in which they all appear together. Mr West’s performance of Pen’s younger brother Harry is also terrific, done with a very slight lightening of tone and elevation of pitch which perfectly conveys his youth and romantic nature.

His interpretations of the female characters are every bit as good. There are no unconvincing falsettos, just an overall lightening of tone and subtle changes in timbre which leave the listener in no doubt as to gender.

I think it’s safe to say that for many of us here at AudioGals, the bar has been set very high when it comes to narrations of historicals by a certain Mr Boulton. That being the case, perhaps the highest praise I can heap upon Mr West is to say that he easily gives Mr B a run for his money and then some.

Caz


Narration: A

Book Content: B

Steam Factor: VERY glad I had my earbuds in

Violence: Minimal

Genre: Historical Romance

Publisher: Hachette Audio

4 thoughts on “What a Duke Dares by Anna Campbell

    1. I hope you’re enjoying it, Bea. I haven’t heard the Deveraux, so you’ll have to pop back and let me know what it’s like!

  1. Ok, I went over to Audible and it turns out Steve West is the narrator of A Knight in Shining Armor by Jude Deveraux!!! Such a lovely romance…my next listen for sure.

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