The duke and Esmeralda’s story, The Duke’s Desire, began much earlier than the prologue of their book. While I included some glimpses into their past connections so that The Duke’s Desire would stand along, you may want to read those earlier encounters in their entirety.

Here’s a brief history of appearances of Esmeralda and the Duke of Haynesdale in my books. 🙂

Esmeralda and made her first appearance in A Most Inconvenient Earl, book four of the Brides of North Barrows, my first Regency romance series. (Sebastian Montgomery was the man who first broke Esmeralda’s heart.)

I was intrigued by her right away.

The Duke of Haynesdale makes his first appearance in The Christmas Conquest, but his holding has appeared in my stories before. You might want to read about Bartholomew, an earlier Lord Haynesdale who reclaimed his stolen legacy in my medieval romance, The Crusader’s Kiss.

The duke and Esmeralda’s story was originally intended to be a subplot and a thread running through all the other books in the Ladies’ Essential Guide to the Art of Seduction series, but by the time I wrote The Widow’s Wager, they were starting to steal the limelight.

The Duke’s Desire begins at roughly the same time as The Hellion’s Heart, which is when I forcibly pushed these two into the background. 🙂

The duke meets Mrs. Oliver at Rockmorton in The Christmas Conquest when he visits Rockmorton at Christmas.

The duke spars with Miss Ballantyne at the soirée in The Masquerade of the Marchioness.

In The Widow’s Wager, Esmeralda is charged with Jacques’ crime and Damien decides to make matters right – and also when he visits her in prison to present his plan. (I love that scene!)

In The Hellion’s Heart, Damien retrieves Sylvie from France while Esmeralda remains imprisoned.

The Bluestocking’s Bargain has few scenes with this pair, but it does follow Patience and Arthur’s quest to publish Esmeralda’s book.

What happens next? The Duke’s Desire ties up many ongoing plot threads in this series, but there’s one more story I want to write. More about that next time. 🙂