The Prince of Pleasure

The Prince of Pleasure is a 2003 historical romance by Nicole Jordan.

Dare is a marquess and earl with a reputation for dissipation, and the novel makes clear that his pleasure-seeking is a way of managing the memory of a woman who left him seven years before. When a threat to the Crown needs investigating, he chooses to use Julienne, the actress he has never got over, as his means of approaching the traitor he is hunting.

Julienne is equally resolved to have nothing to do with him, and the plot's turn is public: Dare declares that he intends to have her as his mistress, and she answers with a counter-declaration of her own, which converts a private history into a contest. Jordan wrote Regency and Scottish historical romances with elaborate plots, and this is a long-form example in which espionage provides the reason for the couple to be thrown together again. Seven years separate the affair that ended from the reunion that reopens it, and in that time Dare has become a notorious rake while Julienne has built a career he is no longer free to walk up to.