She spends most of the book running around the castle with dirty hair and tattered clothes, warding off efforts by her own grandmother to have her raped and impregnated by her own cousin. When the poor Duke tries to get a moment of privacy for a bath, she walks in without even so much as a knock on the door and then stares at the poor guy without an ounce of embarrassment or shame. As for the Duke, well, he deserves a little credit. It makes for scintallating reading. Finally, the book is simply sloppy.
Chapters start and stop willy nilly, serving no particular dramatic purpose.
It's almost as if the author threw the pages of her manuscript down on the floor and then randomly gathered them up again into chapters. This is a tired plot device that will be familiar to readers of other Catherine Coulter books. No one begrudges a hard-working writer for trying to make a buck.