The Devil's Bargain

by Edith Layton

Katherine Corbet abhors injustice -- and is happy to assist the disturbingly attractive Sir Alasdair St. Erth quash the brazen schemes of a marriage-minded opportunist. But appearing on the arm of the dark, dashing rogue at London balls as his interest will never be more than a sham -- no matter how Katherine's aching heart yearns for more.This naive country miss is ideal! With Katherine's unsuspecting assistance, Alasdair can at long last take his revenge on an old, hated enemy -- though it pains him to use such an innocent in this unscrupulous manner. Worse still is the longing she inspires within him, a passionate need to taste the sweetness of her lips. Alasdair knows his vengeful plan could destroy a fragile, blossoming love. And when he finally releases Katherine from his devil's bargain, will he truly be able to let her go?

Genres: Historical Romance, Romance, Historical, Regency, Historical Fiction, Fiction

384 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 2002

About the author

Edith Layton wrote her first novel when she was ten. She bought a marbleized notebook and set out to write a story that would fit between its covers. Now, an award-winning author with more than thirty novels and numerous novellas to her credit, her criteria have changed. The story has to fit the reader as well as between the covers.

Graduating from Hunter College in New York City with a degree in creative writing and theater, Edith worked for various media, including a radio station and a major motion picture company. She married and went to suburbia, where she was fruitful and multiplied to the tune of three children. Her eldest, Michael, is a social worker and artist in NYC. Adam is a writer and performer on NPR's Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me. Daughter Susie is a professional writer, comedian and performer who works in television.

Publishers Weekly called Edith Layton "one of romance's most gifted writers." Layton has enthralled readers and critics with books that capture the spirit of historically distant places and peoples. "What I've found," she says, "is that life was very different in every era, but that love and love of life is always the same."

Layton won an RT Book Reviews Career Achievement award for the Historical genre in 2003 and a Reviewers' Choice award for her book The Conquest in 2001. Amazon.com's top reviewer called Layton's Alas, My Love (April 2005, Avon Books), "a wonderful historical." And her recent release, Bride Enchanted, is a Romantic Times 2007 Reviewers' Choice Award Nominee.

Edith Layton lived on Long Island where she devoted time as a volunteer for the North Shore Animal League , the world's largest no-kill pet rescue and adoption organization. Her dog Daisy --adopted herself from a shelter-- is just one member of Layton's household menagerie.

Edith Layton passed away on June 1, 2009 from ovarian cancer.

Reviews

[Nabilah]

DNF at 40%. Instead of focusing on the heroine, the hero was fixated on his revenge, which became tiresome. The constant emphasis on revenge wore thin quickly, especially when the heroine—a minor, obscure cousin of the family he's targeting—was somehow included in his plans. It just didn't make sense. I read for the romance, but there was hardly any to be found here. Unfortunately, Ms. Layton is hit or miss for me, and this one was a miss

[Desi · Rating 1 out of 5]

I was sick of the word revenge by the end of this book. I need revenge...yada yada yada. Revenge is mine! ... Behold my magnificent Revenge-y mechanisms! ... And through all this bile the reason for his obsession with his enemies, which might have helped us sympathize, was withheld. While he yapped on and on about what he deserved and his single-minded intent to make his enemies suffer (but mind you, only if he stood over them with the metaphorical knife dripping blood looking directly into their eyes so they knew whodunit).

Convoluted is the word that best sums up this plot. Especially his involving the girl, some vague relative of those malevolent Enemies of his, as a way to draw them out. He really didn't seem like that good of a plotter. We were literally told "his aim was to ruin them" so many times that you wanted to shout "well get on with it already!"

Also his Grand Plan which he purportedly spent innumerable years constructing seemed to consist merely of a damning letter. I mean, really? Seems like he wasted a lot of his life. And honestly, if he wanted to face them so badly why wait for an invitation?

He knew where they lived, he could have called on them any day of the week. And pushed his way past the butler if they refused him entry. I really didn't get his reasons for delay. Or the charade with the female (really as a character the heroine was such a bland nonentity I can't for the life of me remember her name and I think of her merely as "the female")

On the more serious side. His reason behind his obsession was brave of the author to tackle. Very unfortunate and rather sad. Funny we are so used to women having to deal with similar incidents but we feel like men ought never to face it because we are perhaps stronger and more resilient in the aftermath of that situation. Centuries of subservience and brainwashing at work perhaps.

But theeennnnn the author went and "took it all back" at the end! Basically erasing the traumatic event that defined his life and dictated his every action since by saying that what he thought had happened actually hadn't happened because he was passed out at the time.

It was one of those annoying cop-outs where the couple who can't get pregnant have a miracle baby at the end or the blind hero gets knocked on the head and can suddenly see again. After a whole book is based on learning to live with trauma or limitations and accept them, to then just magically erase them makes everything that went before a blooming waste of time.

All that aside, I mainly disliked this because I felt the characters were not developed as people. You never got to know anyone. They had no depth and their relationship with each other, what little could be gleaned from their interactions, was surface at best. They never connected as a couple or a unit.

My favorite characters ended up being the stereotypical hired guns of all people, the boy and his father. And the poor mother with the seven ugly duckling daughters to fire off was in essence the most sympathetic character in the bunch

Excerpt-
"Of course there were those rumors about him, and tales of his misspent youth. Still, he wasn’t a youth anymore. Yet he had only thirty-some years in his cup. A man could change. At least, they fervently believed a rich, titled bachelor could. So whatever his past, he was welcome here in the present, with hope for the future."

[Suzy Vero · Rating 1 out of 5]

The Devil’s Bargain (2002) was so full of revenge that I could barely finish it. The hero Alasdair has spent years masterminding a plot of revenge for the death of his father who killed himself. He discovers that the heroine, Katherine is related to the people who caused his father’s suicide so he uses her to get back at them.

Katherine’s agrees tho she doesn’t know the real reason; she’s way too nice to him… trusts him as her attraction deepens.

The pacing of the story dragged on and on .., and its sole focus was on the hero’s obsession with revenge. There’s a brief kiss just past the midway point and then minimal passion after that. This certainly wasn’t an emotional romantic story. Near the end he leaves her just before their wedding night to do one more thing to confound the baddies. He quickly comes back but as far as I’m concerned he’s an all round toad with no redeeming qualities.

Also, I believe there is an historical inaccuracy in the story that appears to be set just after the war with France which ended at Waterloo in 1815. Katherine’s parents stay in a London hotel .., the first hotels appeared in the mid 1830s; Brown’s which claims to be the first, opened in 1837. Easily researched even before the Internet age.

There are excellent revenge plot HRs in which the hero is consumed by getting back at perceived enemies. Two examples, Stormfire by Christine Monson and Chase the Sun by Roseanne Bittner.

Overall, a huge disappointment. Barely ⭐️ and I’m being generous.

[Trenchologist · Rating 4 out of 5]

September Readathon

3+ -- I waffled between which (3 or 4) because there were things that frustrated me, but it was also so nice to read something more than ~witty people set against the wallpaper of Regency and telling more than showing the expected little events and, by now, self-referential hallmarks that happen in so many of those. 4 it is.

Page-and-a-half dialogue reeled off by various characters, long descriptive passages, and low heat level--a read that would strike booktok girlies down where they stand.

It has a depth and investment in details, characterization, and prose. But it's overlong on aspects you want to see moved along and doesn't linger long enough on aspects you really want more time with.

This is an older book--as much as it pains me to admit it's been 22 years since publication--so it's interesting to read a heroine who is both 'not like other girls' of her time, but isn't defined by how that's been done, again and again and again, with more recent Regencies and their trend insisting what heroines really need is modern day feminism. And spunkiness. And maybe a lack of sincerity so none of us feel cringe if they're too genuine and not-clever about some situations.

It's an emotional journey and transformation as much as it's a romance. But the transformation happens *because of love* so the romance is there if you look for it past the enticing but lost promise of how the book begins.

The hero is well-drawn and intriguing, and dangerous and brooding, but again in unique ways to what we get now. He's not simply a rakehell with sardonic smiles and dismissive waves and waltzing with the heroine thrice because propriety be damned. He's got a lot of depth, and a lot of dark history, but he's also nursing the kernel of a much lighter person who can't quite be destroyed by his revenge pursuit and circumstance, and who the heroine discovers, brings out, and comes to love.

The heroine is funny and speaks her mind and stands up for herself, but she feels more "Regency" than how that's shown these days. She does act like a practical country-bred miss, she's bold at points but guileless at others, and gladly shows her appreciation for the hero without feeling silly (or made to look silly) about it.

They just match, after their first entertaining encounter, and from there the 'fake' courtship has them both falling, and brings her into her own person who can live apart from her family and the indispensable role she's allowed them to trap her into, and heals his inner wounds.

Him not being able to give up the revenge plot throughout, I thought, was more him not being able to give her up once he'd found her, but not having the language or willingness to admit his life's consuming ambition had been rumbled, and then altered, so utterly, from the simple fact of meeting the right woman. I didn't think it cheap how he abandons the final killing stroke of his revenge at the end--it's his gesture of completing his transformation into the new, lighter man who now will be consumed by a HEA.

It's also something for him to be treated to the cold facts that the grievances he nursed for so long weren't true as he remembered or suspected them of being. Not to take away from his trauma or the abuse he suffered, but it underscored how fruitless wasting any more time on people whose whole aim was dark pursuits without conscience or care really was at that point. And, the heroine accepted him as he 'was' before they had the full revelations, so he got what he needed to find peace and satisfaction, without anything else having to happen.

The moment when he at last got his huge confrontation and got to mete his long-cherised just deserts had some real 'for you it was the worst and most defining day of your life, for us it was a Tuesday' energy.

But I was glad how, with gathering frequency as he fell deeper in love, he'd immediately backtrack after thinking to tell a half-truth or less to the heroine to realize she needed, and deserved, to know everything, in total. There were zero 'conflict due to the lack of a five-minute conversation' in this, and wow, glorious! it can be done!

For all that, the book could feel stilted at points. Too little broke up the landscape of the couple's small outings (and growing, but very tempered) attraction and his mind always on The Revenge. You could lop 100 pages of that out and still have a complete story.

The red herring threats to the hero and heroine weren't obvious, but also underscored how obsessively the hero connected everything to his nemeses--to then learn not everything was done by them pulling various levers. It was just life, including things caused by his dangerous lifestyle that he'd have to change to keep the heroine and his different/new way of life with her safe.

I liked the hero's best friend (Leigh). Odd but good fellow, loyal, and there when we needed the hero to process the situation and think aloud and tell us things. Also there to be kind to the heroine and, while I don't think he fell in love with the heroine's young cousin, he wasn't ever unkind about that either.

The funniest and perhaps most sympathetic character was the heroine's older cousin -- a woman under the onerous weight of marrying off seven daughters (think on THAT, Mrs Bennet's poor nerves!).

The couple really does fall in love over the course of the book and their would-be deal. And turns from plotting to the outright romance of admitting their feelings and anticipating being together, forever. It lets the start of the book--the textured sense of and time spent with a different, interesting hero, the not-like-other-girls but in not-like-other-girls way heroine--down, but it very much lifts them up.

[Maria · Rating 2 out of 5]

I found this book monotonous. The pace was slow, the logic behind the story was not compelling and felt somewhat contrived, and the characters did not grab me. The theme of vengeance was reiterated over and over, but St. Erth's dilly-dallying about it was so frustrating that I stopped caring.

[Raine A · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is a reread and started with a promising scene. We have a captivating lord recently returned to England from abroad with a dark reputation shrouded in mystery and ignominy. He is immediately cornered by a selfish noble lady bent on attaching herself to him in marriage. Our hero is capable of not falling apart over her schemes but nonetheless he is rescued by the heroine who had entered the same room to save him from the former woman’s clutches. She is beautiful and witty and the hero, Sir Alasdair, is instantly intrigued.

However, he would have forgotten all about her as he has only one passion and aim in life- revenge against those who wronged him in his youth. It is only when he discovers that she is a close relation to the very people he wishes to flush out that he embarks on a plan to be seen with her socially. He recognises that she is an intelligent lady and tells her that if they both decide to give the impression to the ton of his interest in her it would suit both their needs. He of course doesn’t tell her the real reason but pretends that he needs her good reputation and station to elevate his name in society without having to worry about being pushed into matrimony. She, Kate Corbet, a downright reasonable young woman, knows a man of Sir Alasdair’s heights is well beyond her reach and is perfectly content to go about town enjoying herself but more importantly getting her favourite gentle and pretty cousin, Lady Sybil, out of a house where she is being hidden from the ton, so that her three desperate older unattractive sisters have a chance to get married as they are having no luck despite their large dowries and titles.

Both the characters, although reluctant to feel anything but friendship for the other, can’t help but be charmed and delighted with one another. Alasdair is constantly cautioned by his only friend, Lord Leigh, who knows the truth behind his motives, not to break the innocent miss’s heart. Kate is pleased to be with Alasdair but finds her new popularity a bit unsettling and would rather go home to her happy family and village. In between their musings, Alasdair is accosted by thugs and stabbed. Kate throws society’s dictates to the wind and visits her dear friend while he is convalescing. It is then that there is a shift in recognising their feelings. It all comes to a head though when she is kidnapped, and Alasdair can’t figure out to where and by whom. When he eventually rescues her at an inn, they both realise how much they care for one another. They return a day later and announce their impending marriage. From then the book revolves around both analysing their feelings further and dealing with minor insecurities and frustrations till their wedding in eight weeks’ time.

All this would have made for a simple, short, pleasing book- its Edith Layton, so well written, obviously. Its not a short Harlequin Regency, as some of her earlier books. It’s in fact written after a few other C Series have been published. It was nice to see characters such as Viscount Sinclair(The Cad ), Drummond(The Conquest ) and the Ryders(The Choice ) being mentioned who all turn out to be friends of Sir Alasdair. The Norths ( Lord of Dishonor) too make an appearance as they are distant cousins to Kate and invite her over for afternoon tea.

So where did it fall short? I liked Kates character but Alasdair at times annoyed me with his obsession over his revenge. It wasn’t that his trauma wasn’t worth it but that he was consumed by it. He constantly mentioned and thought over it. It overshadowed his wedding day even. The night before he sat like a senile mad scientist in the dark plotting and planning his meeting with them. Perhaps that was the authors point- but it made him unattractive as a person and I wondered why a man like Lord Leigh stuck around him. When he finally did meet the Scalby’s, the whole thing seemed anti climatic. I felt sorry for Alasdair that he spent his life trying to bring them down, when it wasn’t as necessary. It cast doubts on his future happiness though he insisted to Kate and himself that he could finally move on with his life. How can he? His revenge was his religion. Its like a man of faith discovering that there is no afterlife. All that spying and gathering of evidence and he never found out what’s happening to them physically?

In all, I’d give this book 3.5 stars and mostly because its Edith Layton and I do like her work, especially her C and Botany Bay series.

[Matilda BGR · Rating 2 out of 5]

Some of the aspects make it more like 2.5.

The title should really be "The Devil's Revenge" because that is the only thing it is about. On and on and on ... it was interminable.

I just finished this book yesterday and I don't remember the hero's name (bad sign) ... the heroine is Kate. Anywhoo, the hero (the Devil) is a wealthy aristocrat who seems to just edge around society. Evidently he has some sort of bad reputation, though it's not clear to me how that reputation has been formed since he has been away from England for a long time. There are many references, both in the narrative and in dialogue, to his terrible deeds ... though we're not exactly sure what they were, but maybe a lot were done when he was a spy? during the war? I guess?

We're told that the Devil is consumed with a need for revenge on a couple of other people. It takes a bit to find out who they are, and it is almost the end of the book before we know exactly what they did to him that has made him so obsessed with getting back at them. (And, SPOILER! Turns out what he remembers isn't *exactly* what happened so he's spent 15 or more years destroying his soul for, yes, a terrible thing that he experienced BUT it was not as super horrible as he thought.)

But damn, his obsession is reallllllllly unattractive.

He has this sort of kooky plan that if he constructs a fake courtship with Kate, who is a distant relative of the couple on whom he needs revenge, he will draw them out and then he will humiliate them in front of society. But, you know what the reader thinks? These terrible people who did him this injustice years ago are recluses -- they don't even circulate in society. What is the point of humiliating people who don't interact with others anyway? And why would they give a shit if he is courting their cousin with whom they don't even have a relationship?

For some reason Kate, who apparently is sensible and intelligent, agrees to go along with this fake courtship solely because the Devil asked? Really? I mean, she does get some fun outings around London out of it, but she is never told until the reader finds out, almost at the end of the story, what these terrible people did. She just trusts the hero that his -- I cannot stress enough, OBSESSIVE -- need for revenge is rational.

She promptly falls in love with him and realizes that she's not faking her interest in him, but she's anxious because she believes he's faking his interest in her, and she finds it all unsettling. HE thinks he cannot love, of course, and it takes him a while to admit to himself that he cares for her too, but he's just a mess, emotionally, and it would have been better for her to get away from him much earlier in the story.

[Hopefulpuffin · Rating 3 out of 5]

This started out with so much promise. St. Erth is one of those Bad Boys that all the girls want, and all the men want to be, but all St. Erth wants is revenge. Heaps of it. Our heroine Kate helps him out of a tight spot and he decides to recruit her, ostensibly to make him appear “respectable,” but really to further his scheme against one of her many sets of cousins. All kinds of things ensue: kidnapping, debauchery, red herrings, and a HEA.

What was so frustrating about this was the revenge plot. Revenge revenge revenge. Pick a synonym for revenge and it was in there too. Got it. St. Erth has been done wrong and he will seek vengeance. Get justice. Have his revenge. Some of the plot was silly - the kidnapping - and some characters were introduced, and never really went anywhere. What happened to Leigh and Sybil? Some of the other cousins? The whole Lolly plot line left me scratching my head.

By the halfway mark or so, enough clues had been dropped that it was pretty clear where things were headed with the dreaded Scalbys. The climax was suitably sordid and grotesque.

What dropped this at least one star was the repetitiveness of... everything! Have I mentioned St. Erth wanted revenge? I’d have enjoyed seeing what happened to some of the side characters, but to my knowledge this is a stand-alone.

Solid PG-13.

[Darbella · Rating 2 out of 5]

Just finished The Devil's Bargain by Edith Layton. Was just okay. Too much time spent on his thinking about revenge with only telling us parts of why he wanted revenge. And then when we do find out all that all had not happened to him that he thought did. Perhaps the author by the end decided to save him from the torment he thought had happened by making it tamer. (Which I appreciate but then it sort of made all those years of his only goal of revenge kind of sad). I was really grossed out by the Syphilis details of two of the side characters. Again, I appreciate that the author went there, but zoinks.
2.75 to 3 rating from me. However, usually my 3 ratings I would happily reread. This one is more of a one and done so not sure it should get the 3 star. Sigh!

[JulianneWells · Rating 2 out of 5]

Alasadair is bent on revenge and has no problem using an innocent lady as a means to an end. however, he and Kate build a relationship as he attempts to lure out her cousins and exact his revenge.

ok, but I didnt really care abput the MC, the revenge story, and I didnt care.

clunky and uninspiring.

[Alice · Rating 2 out of 5]

Fiction : Romance : Historical
Catherine Corbet aids Sir Alsdair, who is using her to get revenge. I don't so much enjoy love coming out of using someone.

[P. · Rating 3 out of 5]

Romantic comedy with evil underpinnings. A good enough read, even though it feels staged.

[Amy · Rating 3 out of 5]

DNF 30%… too much revenge talk not enough romance

[Cecy · Rating 2 out of 5]

I thought it an 'Eh' book. It was interesting during the beginning, but the hero's past was drawn out a bit too long and so I found myself skipping through most of the middle just to get to the ending.

There were some cute moments between H&h where he would make her blush for the benefit of their 'charade' but over all not a lot of romance. not until like 70% into the book do they share a passionate embrace in which they are caught by Leigh and Swanson and then decide to marry with just a look in each others' eyes.

And the thing I didn't like at all was that most of the book was about his determination to get his vengeance on those who wronged him and at the end of the book, he completely lets it go. :/ like wth?

I also wanted a story between Leigh and Sybil, but I guess we'll have to leave it at what EL insinuated.

[Claire Hay · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was a lot. I honestly can not tell you how many times Alasdair would talk about revenge. It was too many times and what the story was mainly about. The romance was second to his revenge plot and it made me disinterested. Most of this book was pretty forgettable. The side characters weren’t great and could have been improved. Also the end felt a little rushed.

[Joy · Rating 3 out of 5]

A man with a dark past and a revenge fantasy about to come true engages in a mostly-fake courtship with the heroine to assist in his revenge. Can he decide between revenge and his new love? Will he be able to protect his new (girl)friend from the dangers in his life? This was actually really good, which is surprising because I remember reading a Layton book years ago and not being impressed at all. Maybe she's hit-or-miss, or maybe my taste has changed.

[Patrizia · Rating 2 out of 5]

Mi aspettavo di più, dopo avere letto 'The Duke's wager'. In realtà, il racconto è sufficientemente sostenuto fino a tre quarti del libro; ma la fine (inaspettatamente melensa) non mi è piaciuta affatto. Seguendo il penoso strascinarsi della storia verso gli ultimi capitoli, non ho potuto fare a meno di chiedermi: forse anche le moderne scrittrici di romanzi, come i più celebri Dickens e Dumas, sono pagate un tanto a pagina?

[penelopewanders · Rating 3 out of 5]

Quite good story although the revelation about the cause of the hero's need for revenge is drawn out a bit too much through the book - we know something unforgivable has happened, but don't know what until right at the end... Dialogue not quite as sparkling and book as a whole not as witty as some of Layton's other books, but enjoyable nonetheless.

[Alex · Rating 1 out of 5]

Didn't quite enjoy this book; actually I didn't eveb finish....I thought Edith would do a story for Sybil, but she really was just a secondary character

[Terri · Rating 4 out of 5]

One of Edith Layton's better novels. I particularly liked the heroine in this story.

[LemontreeLime · Rating 3 out of 5]

nice!

[June · Rating 2 out of 5]

very weak in romance side. does not feel the moment the two started falling in love or how they really felt about each other.

[Diamond]

The H seek revenge from the h's relatives - he fake courting her