Scandal

Emily Faringdon has accepted that she will never marry. A youthful mistake has cost her a respectable reputation, and she expects to spend her years as a spinster. Then a letter exchange with an unknown gentleman begins, and she finds herself growing deeply attached to him. Her correspondent appears to be the man of her dreams, thoughtful, clever, and principled. The story moves between a grand country house in Hampshire and the fashionable salons of London.

The man behind the letters is Simon Augustus Traherne, the Earl of Blade, and he is not what he appears. Dark passions and a painful secret shape his character, and the whole of London society is wary of him. Emily, however, is not intimidated. Even as she gives in to his charm, she understands that his courtship has a hidden purpose.

Emily must reach the guarded heart of this amber-eyed, dangerous nobleman before the old wrongs that bind their pasts together tear apart the one love she has ever known. Written by Jayne Ann Krentz under her Amanda Quick pen name, this is a Regency-era romance.