Ravished by Amanda Quick

Buckle up Jane, it's the Regency!  Harriet is a fossil hunter!  Gideon is a viscount, which is evidently a job!  He's grim and broody and has an Evil Past full of Scandals and also a cool scar!  She's Tracy Flick in a pelisse!  There are smugglers!  And parties!  It's Amanda Quick's Ravished! Surprise - nobody actually gets ravished in this book.  I know, right?  There's an attempted rape that's foiled by Wile E. Coyoteing a boulder onto the guy, which is the way I'd like to see all rapists handled from here on out.  There is also an exceedingly gentle kidnapping, some ugly murders in the past including one set up to make a young woman look like she died by suicide, and an awful lot of fossil talk.  This author, who also writes as Jayne Ann Krentz and several other pseudonyms,  often writes men who are, ahem, very forceful - in this book he's absolutely met his match and I think this one will be fine even for people who are turned off by that aspect of her earlier books.