Neither Fish nor Fowl…
Kathleen de Beauvoir does not know who she is. Adopted by loving parents when only hours old, she has a wonderful family, including an irascible older brother, and a place in her parents’ hearts that is never in doubt. Yet she doesn’t fit in. Her father is a brilliant scientist, but she has no aptitude for the subject. Her mother is a dynamic whirlwind of a woman who can claim the Duke and Duchess of Bedwin as kin, and Kathy is not at ease among the ton. Even with friends at her side, it is hard to be comfortable among people who regard her with suspicion, who believe her blood may hold unknown qualities that could taint the purity of their family line. Good heavens, her actual parents might have been criminals! Unfortunately, Kathy does not help her situation, overburdened as she is with a wealth of opinions, a habit of speaking before thinking, and an impulsive nature.
Her first season is bound to be ghastly.
A Devil on the Road to Redemption…
The Earl of Vane has a well-earned reputation for being selfish, arrogant, cruel, and despicable. He has made an enthusiastic study of vice and dissipation for most of his adult life until someone decides he’s gone too far. Stabbed and left to die in a filthy alleyway, Vane realises his mistakes too late, but a quirk of fate and charity he has no right to claim gives him a second chance.
An Unlikely Alliance…
When Kathy recognises this man is the one she helped raise from the dead, she calls in the debt he owes, finding her own sense of purpose in the school he is funding to atone for his sins. Kathy is in no doubt of what kind of man the Earl of Vane is, having heard his fevered confessions of wickedness. However, she cannot be certain such a man can ever truly change, no matter how many schools he funds or how much she wants to believe it possible.
A terrible secret…
Vane’s memory is still hazy following his attack, and it takes some time and a chance encounter for him to remember the girl who helped tend his wounds, though her sharp tongue left more of a mark than her care.
A wicked past is not so easily erased, though, and as Vane dares to hope for a future with a woman he knows he does not deserve, he discovers the path to redemption is harder than he could ever have imagined.