Slightly Dangerous

Slightly Dangerous is a historical romance by the English writer Mary Balogh, published in 2004. It is the novel in which Wulfric Bedwyn, the head of the family, finally has his own story.

The Bedwyns are six brothers and sisters, men and women of passion and privilege, and each of the novels follows one of them through courtship, temptation and scandal. This one belongs to Wulfric, the eldest son and the head of the family, who is cool, arrogant and mysterious and is known in London as the cold-as-ice Duke of Bewcastle. He arrives at the most glittering social event of the season and finds that the only woman in the room who is not trying to capture his attention is the one who interests him. Christine Derrick is intrigued by the duke, and rather more so when he invites her to become his mistress, an offer she has no intention of accepting. The book works through the contest between the two of them against the high society of Regency England.

Christine is unimpressed by rank, which is part of what makes her interesting to a man who is used to being deferred to. Balogh wrote the Bedwyn novels as a series of connected romances, and this is the last of them.