His brothers are dubbed the Wild One and the Defiant One, but Lord Charles de Montforte has always been THE BELOVED ONE. Blonde and handsome as sin, he should have an easy life, but when a bullet from a rebel gun shoots him down he believes he is the "despised one."

Charles finds himself wounded and being cared for by a sweet colonial miss who tends him in the hopes that he will regain his sight.

Treated no better than a lowly servant by her step-mother and step-sisters, Amy Leighton risks a great deal to care for the Redcoat her brother accidentally shot. Charles becomes the bright spot in her dreary life of drudgery, and she is determined to help him in body and soul.

Amy gives her love freely, but Charles has a fiancée and a family, and is torn between his growing attraction to Amy and his loyalty to England and the de Montfortes. Charles dreads their reaction when they discover that he is blind and a disgrace.

It is Amys unconditional love that compels Charles to fight for himself. When his sight is restored he takes Amy with him to England to put the demons of his past and his conscience to rest.

Sweet and tender, THE BELOVED ONE is an intricate part of Ms. Harmons de Montforte series, and explains a great deal about the brothers and fills in the blanks in her first novel The Wild One. Perhaps too much of THE BELOVED ONE is spent filling in those blanks and setting up the next book for this to be a stand alone novel. SENSUAL (Nov., 348 pp., $5.99)

—Kathe Robin