The Devil's Darling

The Devil's Darling is a 1975 Harlequin romance by Violet Winspear, published as a 189-page paperback.

Persepha loses her guardian without warning, and her grief leaves her receptive to a marriage that she would otherwise have refused. Don Diablo Ezreldo Ruy, a friend of the man who died, proposes to her and answers her objection about love by promising that it will follow. The novel's turn comes when she discovers that his reason for the marriage is entirely different from the one he gave her.

That discovery is the whole of the plot: the promise that love would come, set against a motive that has nothing to do with her. What he wants from the marriage is a child rather than a wife, so the assurance he gave her is the part of the arrangement she has to test. The novel belongs to the Harlequin line of its period, in which a young heroine is placed under the authority of an older man and has to work out what he actually wants before anything he says can be relied on.