First published 2021
Lady Violet Grey gets a letter saying her husband, Lord James Audley, has been thrown from his horse and knocked unconscious at their country estate. She drops everything and races to his side. She finds him upright, healthy, and drinking at a tavern, with no idea she was ever worried. Four years of cold silence between them, and this is what breaks it: her fury, his bewilderment, and the unmistakable fact that she still cares enough to run. Violet decides he deserves a lesson. She takes to her bed with a convincing fake illness. James sees through it immediately but plays along anyway. What follows is a contest of escalating schemes: hired actors posing as physicians, threats of sending Violet to a Swiss sanitarium, a manufactured mistress, and more flirtation than either of them has managed in years. Underneath the theater is a real question. Two people who fell hard for each other in Regency England, married fast, fought catastrophically, and spent four years pretending indifference now have to decide whether all that performance is covering up something that never actually died.
Genres: romance, adult, adult-fiction, historical-romance, contemporary-romance
Vibes: charming, emotionally-resonant, playful, romantic, witty
Tropes: enemies-to-lovers, escalating-schemes, fake-illness, married-couple, second-chance-romance
Setting: Regency England, country estate, Swiss sanitarium
Period: Regency era
361 pages · Paperback · Atria Books