The Rejected Suitor

‘The Rejected Suitor’ by Teresa McCarthy is a clean regency romance. It is also the first book of five of The Clearbrook Series. There are four sons and one daughter in the Clearbrook family.

Lady Emily Clearbrook is the youngest child. Now that she is twenty and the war with Napoleon is over, her brothers have decided that she needs to find a husband. The fact that her father left her with a large dowry and all the men are coming out of the woodwork also has something to do with their decision. All of them had been off to war until recently. The eldest, Roderick, is now duke since his father’s death three years ago, but he was away at war. Together the brothers decide that they will choose Emily’s husband for her. When they find one of her suitors, Sir James Theodore Fennington, climbing in her window they decide they need to stash her away until the find her husband. Roderick calls in a favor of his friend Jared, knowing that he would leave her alone.

Earl Jared James William Ashton of Stonebridge had once loved Emily. He had even asked her father for her hand in marriage. The problem was that her father had a grudge against his family and so threatened him if he so much as tried to talk to Emily again. If he saw Emily again, he would marry Emily off to a gentleman who was about seventy years old! (Whether he really would have done that didn’t matter, the threat remained.) Some days later, Emily’s father paid another man to have his daughter found in a compromising position with Jared so he had to marry her. So Jared married the lady and left England and joined the army in India, thoroughly breaking Emily’s heart. (At the time his older brother was still alive.) Later his wife died and so did his brother.

What almost no one knows is that Emily is a spy for Whitehall (England’s CIA) with the code name Silver Fox. She has grown up a lot. She thinks that what her brothers are doing is archaic; she can take care of herself. Jared is also a spy for Whitehall and known as the Black Wolf. It is known that the spy Silver Fox almost died getting information that saved Black Wolf’s life. And Jared’s Aunt Agatha Appleby is also a spy and the one who recruited Emily, but Jared doesn’t know this.

Roderick sends Emily to Hemmingly Hall to stay with Jared, Aunt Agatha, and Jared’s cousin Jane Greenwell. There is still attraction between Emily and Jared, although both try to deny it. When Roderick comes to see how Emily is doing, he meets Jane and is attracted to her.

There is romance, intrigue, and a few secrets as well. This is a great story, it comes in e-book format.