title: Bravo for the Bride
author:  Elizabeth Eyre 
description: Billed as historical mystery, Eyre's latest tale of political and personal intrigue in medieval Italy is weak on both fronts. Melodramatic episodes in three duchies follow the strangling of a bad-tempered 15-year-old princess the day after her arranged marriage to a loutish prince. Assigned to find those responsible is hero-sleuth Sigismondo, a soldier of fortune with a shaved head and commanding presence, assisted by his servant, Benno, who successfully poses as a halfwit and carries in his jerkin a small woolly dog named Biondello. Sigismondo quickly becomes the target of a killer or killers, poses as an engineer to spy on and blow up a fort being built by a renegade duke, uses a slingshot to kill three brigands who attack another highborn lady and also rescues her from an abductor?and finally tracks down and duels the killer of the princess. This, the fourth Sigismondo caper (following Death of a Duchess), from England's Jill Staynes and Margaret Storey writing as Elizabeth Eyre, features a cast made up of too much caricature and too little depth. <br />Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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  _The Marriage Act_
  
  By Alyssa Everett
  
   _London_ , _1821_
  
  When John, Viscount Welford, proposed to Caroline Fleetwood, the only daughter
  of the Bishop of Essex, he thought he knew exactly what he was getting—a
  lovely, innocent bride.
  
  Five years later, he knows better. The woman who ran to another man on their
  wedding night— _after_ they’d consummated the marriage—is hardly innocent.
  Years spent apart while John served as a diplomatic attaché have allowed them
  to save face in society, but all good pretenses must come to an end. When
  Caroline receives word that her father is dying, she begs John to accompany
  her on one last journey to see him.
  
  But there’s an added problem—Caroline never told her father that her marriage
  to John was a farce. As they play-act for others, Caroline is delighted to
  find she never really knew her husband at all. But can she be the kind of wife
  he needs—and does she want to be?
  
  85,950 words
  
  Dear Reader,
  
  I’ve been hearing the t