The Seducer

The Seducer is a historical romance by the American writer Madeline Hunter, published by Bantam Books in 2003.

Diane Albret is orphaned as a girl and rescued by Daniel St. John, who becomes her guardian and arranges a quiet, protected life for her. What he does not arrange is her feelings: from the moment he arrived to rescue her, she has seen more in him than merely a guardian, and over the years he has become the most dangerously attractive man she can imagine. By the time the novel opens she is no longer a bewildered schoolgirl but a woman with her own intentions, and she is unwilling to remain inside the arrangements other people have made for her. The two of them are drawn into a scandalous and risky attachment, complicated by Daniel's own history and by whatever it is that makes him so careful with her, and the novel follows the process by which a man who has spent years keeping his distance is finally caught.

Hunter writes historical romance with a strong thread of suspense, and this novel is the first of a series connected by its charismatic male characters.