Give me an intelligent hero and heroine who feel like outsiders in society, and I am happy as can be. Both Lady Jane Pennington and Ethan Dumont are outsiders – in society but not of it, and I liked them both immensely. The Rogue is the fifth single title release (there’s an anthology contribution as well) in Celeste Bradley’s popular series The Liar’s Club, about a group of men who pose as members of a gambling club, but who actually perform services for the Crown.

Lady Jane Pennington is the beautiful, wealthy daughter of a marquess. She lives in London with her uncle Lord Maywell and her five cousins, The Maywell, and is known throughout the ton as Lady Pain for her habit of breaking hearts. She’s had offers of marriage, but the intelligent Jane does not want to marry just any fashionplate.

Ethan Dumont is of middle class origins, but did not want to be a shopkeeper and went his own way very quickly. He is a professional gambler, owns a beautiful home and mixes in with all the right people, but he is Not Our Kind and fully aware of that fact. Ethan has had contact with some of the members of The Liar’s Club in earlier books, and the head of it – Collis Tremaine – wants him to spy on Lord Maywell, whom they suspect may be a traitor. Ethan doesn’t want to, until he meets Lady Jane.

Jane and Ethan strike sparks off each other almost from the beginning. Jane senses that Ethan is more than just a ramshackle gambler when she witnesses his kindness to one of her cousins. Ethan is dazzled by Jane’s beauty, and just as dazzled by her intelligence. He decides to join the Liars, and on his first mission, he finds that Lord Maywell is not the amiable silly ass that he appears to be, and Jane is in trouble.

While I loved the characters, one incident just about drove me crazy. Jane overhears some of Lord Maywell’s conversation and realizes he is a traitor. Maywell finds out and, as the head of the family, he signs papers to commit Jane to Bedlam. Ethan is trying to ingratiate himself with Maywell and as part of his guise, Ethan takes Jane there, under the impression that it is a place of rest and that he can get her out as soon as the danger from Maywell is past. Come on!! Bedlam was a notorious place, and Ethan is neither naive nor stupid. He should know about Bedlam and what kind of place it was. His actions in this section of the novel made him appear stupid beyond belief!

However, the rest of the book was very good and I enjoyed it, even though I have only read one other book in this series. There was lots of action and plots-a-plenty which made for a fast-paced read, but it was the characters who made this book for me.

I love intelligent outsiders, and both Ethan and Jane were excellent examples. Jane had a Big Secret in her past (and one in the present as well). She is too smart to be an ornament on a man’s arm, but she knows she must marry and she wants to marry – she is a passionate woman. There is a scene where Ethan seduces her with words in the darkness of the carriage where they are riding that is hot as can be. Call it the Regency equivalent of phone sex. Later, she is the one who takes the initiative when it comes to physically seducing Ethan. Normally, the Virgin Slut as a character does not work for me, but in this case it did owing to Jane’s formidable intelligence and personality.

Ethan was not quite as memorable, and he did the I Am Not Worthy schtick for far too long, but he too ended as a very likable character. His interactions with his butler (whom he calls Jeeves) were funny and caused me to laugh out loud several times. The secondary characters were very good, especially Lord Maywell. Yes, he’s a traitor but his reasons for supporting Bonaparte are understandable. He has a real reason, he’s not a traitor just because he’s evil.

Readers who have followed Bradley’s series will want to get The Rogue as soon as they can. It really isn’t a good place to start for those new to the series, although it can be read alone. While the Regency spy has been done (some say overdone) as a storyline, the books in the Liar’s Club are some of the best with this plot, The Rogue among them.