Part of The Regency Vows
First published 2023
Jane Spencer did not choose to marry Viscount Penvale. Her guardian sold the deal: Penvale gets his beloved ancestral home, Trethwick Abbey, back in the family, and Jane comes along as part of the price. When they meet in London, the chemistry is more frost than fire. He strikes her as cold and distant. She strikes him as stubborn and sharp. They agree to a marriage in name only and travel together to the Cornish estate. Jane has no intention of sharing her new home with a man she barely tolerates, so she recruits her housekeeper and sets a plan in motion: stage a haunting, spook Penvale into retreating to London, and have Trethwick Abbey to herself. The problem is that Penvale refuses to be scared off. Worse, the more time Jane spends with him, the harder it becomes to remember why she wanted him gone in the first place. Martha Waters writes with a sharp wit and a light touch, turning a marriage of convenience into a warm, funny story about two people who mistake stubbornness for incompatibility.
Genres: romance, adult, adult-fiction, historical-romance, contemporary-romance
Vibes: humorous, light-hearted, romantic, warm, witty
Tropes: enemies-to-lovers, forced-proximity, marriage-of-convenience, slow-burn
Setting: Trethwick Abbey, Cornwall, London
Period: 19th-century
325 pages · Paperback · Atria Books