Books in reading order
A connected trilogy of society deception where a public engagement, a coded mystery, and a courtroom finish pull Ashwood and Hart into the same dangerous season. Fake alliances and cipher work keep the scandal sheets busy until the truth has nowhere left to hide.
3 books
A connected trilogy of society deception where a public engagement, a coded mystery, and a courtroom finish pull Ashwood and Hart into the same dangerous season. Fake alliances and cipher work keep the scandal sheets busy until the truth has nowhere left to hide.
Tropes: fake engagement · cipher/mystery · courtroom · reputation risk
Lady Cordelia Ashwood has four weeks to avoid being married off like a useful piece of family property. Maximilian Hart, Earl of Ravenmere, needs respectability before rumors of murder and treason finish what war began. Their solution is outrageous, practical, and entirely temporary: a fake engagement staged for the most suspicious drawing rooms in Regency London. But every public smile and tactical touch makes the lie feel less like strategy and more like surrender.Book 1
Cordelia and Max are married - but their happily ever after is already under siege. A challenge to the Ravenmere title has become public, Whitehall wants Max back in the shadows, and Sir Julian Ffoulkes knows exactly how to turn society gossip into a weapon. When the trail leads to a hostile country-house party, the new Countess of Ravenmere refuses to remain decorative.Book 2
Max is imprisoned on a treason charge, and Cordelia has one weapon left: the secret voice she once hid from the world. To save her husband, she must step from the drawing room into court politics, expose herself as the satirist behind Ashwood's Almanack, and decide whether justice requires destroying another woman who fought with the same weapon.Book 3