This is the third in a series of Regency romances involving members of the "Inferno Club" which pretends to be a dissolute drinking and wenching club for aristocratic rakes but this is actually the cover for a secret order of noble spies who are working to defend King and Country.
The series to date consists of:
1) "
My Wicked Marquess: Inferno Club Book 1"
2) "
My Dangerous Duke (Inferno Club)"
3) This book, "My Irresistible Earl"
4) "
My Dark Prince: Inferno Club: Book 4" (Forthcoming March 2012)
Part of the Order's time is spent fighting open threats, e.g. Napoleon, but much of the ongoing story concerns their fight against another secret organisation called the "Promethians," a ruthless international campaign with an idealistic vision to remake world society but which uses murderous methods to try to achieve it.
The main action of the story begins in 1814: as the hero, who is the "Irresistible earl" of the title, meets for the first time in a decade the woman who he had loved and lost when he was a very young man and she was a teenager. He was unable to marry her because he was about to take up a dangerous, secret posting abroad during the Napoleonic wars. Thinking herself deserted, our heroine married instead a worthless aristocrat. She was widowed when he eventually died in an pointless accident, leaving her a comfortably provided for and with a baby son who is the main focus of her life.
But now that Napoleon is banished to Elba and our handsome earl is back in society, they meet again and sparks begin to fly between them. But his secret mission may threaten their hopes to rebuild their relationship - and bring both our heroine and her son into danger ...
If you can accept this ludicrous premise, and are not too bothered by the fact that most of the characters in this story are much more modern in many aspects of their behaviour than members of the ton would have been two hundred years ago, this is reasonably entertaining.