"What Price Love?" answered in new Cynster novel

Lady Priscilla Dalloway of County Kilkenny, Ireland, is on a mission to find her twin brother in "What Price Love?" by Stephanie Laurens ($22.95, HarperCollins). After a falling out with their father, the Earl of Kentland, Rus (his heir) left home.

Horse-mad Rus has always dreamed of training an Irish Derby champion, but the earl doesn't agree that that's an appropriate occupation for his heir. Rus leaves home to follow his dream, getting a job as an assistant stableman at Lord Cromarty's stables.

Priscilla finds out some disturbing information about Lord Cromarty's former assistant stableman -- he quit his job because, as he told his cronies there "was something going on that he didn't hold with." But Pris can't ask him what because Paddy O' Loughlin has disappeared and is presumed to be dead by his friends.

Priscilla wants to warn her brother, but before she can take steps to do so, she receives a letter from Rus, telling her that he's discovered what he thinks is plot by the head stableman at Cromarty's to run some kind of illicit racing scheme.

Rus doesn't know what the racket is exactly, just that it involves some kind of register so he's traveling to Newmarket with the Cromarty racing string to try and discover and expose the plot. Only Rus doesn't know about O'Loughlin's fate.

Priscilla is determined to help Rus, so she, her Aunt Eugenia and her aunt's goddaughter, Adelaide, set off for England. But once in England, Priscilla discovers that Rus too is missing and that Harkness, the Cromarty's head stableman has offered a reward to anyone sighting Rus.

Now Priscilla has to find out what this register is and how it figures into the scheme her brother is investigating in order to figure out some way to find and help him. But she hadn't counted on Dillon Caxton, protege of Demon Cynster, and Keeper of the Register of all racing horses in England.

Introducing herself to Dillon as "Miss Priscilla Dalling," Pris bats her eyes and asks to get a look at the Register. Immediately suspicious, there have been several attempts at the Jockey Club of break ins to steal said register, Dillon refuses.

Now comes the battle of wits between a woman desperate to save her brother and a man entrusted with sacred trust he won't break.

Fans of Cynster novels can rejoice as Laurens' has penned another winner.