The romantic - Madeline Hunter

A passionate new historical romance in Madeline Hunter's nationally bestselling Seducer series.
This one features a fifth member of the London Dueling Society, the reserved, enigmatic lawyer to the Laclere family: Julian Hampton.
All his life, it seemed, Julian had been in love with Penelope, now Countess of Glasbury.
And when he learned the horrors she had endured at the hands of her vicious husband, Julian was instrumental in arranging for her escape to Italy.
But he has never forgotten the love of his childhood, the woman he had rescued first as a "damsel in distress" when she was a girl, and then for real once she had blossomed into woman.
When Penelope returns secretly to London, Julian is the one she turns to, even though her trust in him puts both their reputations, and ultimately their lives, in peril.