Determined to protect her clan of social outcasts, swindler Rosalind Sharpe comes to London with a con in mind but gets caught in a web of desire and deceit with the roguish Duke of Avendale.
When con artist Rose comes to London in time for the grand opening of the Twin Dragons, a former gentlemen’s gaming club now open to wealthy female patrons, she plans on making social connections with a number of rich gentlemen, in hopes of setting them up as future marks. Instead, she meets the Duke of Avendale, and the attraction between them is instant and intense. Torn between actually entering into a relationship with the man and defrauding him of a fortune, Rose decides her family secrets are too volatile to trust him with. But when her plans go awry and she winds up beholden to him, she discovers that Avendale has a few dark secrets of his own, and he's far more forgiving of her foibles than she ever imagined, especially after he discovers whom she's protecting and how honorable her intentions are, even though they’ve forced her into a life of crime. Heath’s latest Victorian-set romance, the last in her Scandalous Gentlemen of St. James Place series, pits two unconventional romance leads against one another, but somewhere along the way, they fall into attraction, then fascination, and then, finally, love. An extraordinary cast of secondary characters is loosely fashioned after some of the most famous human curiosities of Victorian England.
A beautiful, unconventional romance that entwines two fierce, lonely hearts who believed they were unlovable and reminds us of the best and worst of human nature.