The Wickedest Lord Alive

Xavier Westruther, Marquis of Steyne, stealthily beds his new bride in the dead of night and makes a quick exit, vowing never to darken her door again. Then the newly despoiled marchioness, formerly Lady Alexandra Simmons, disappears as well. From these breathless first pages, Brooke (The Greatest Lover Ever) deftly weaves a Regency romance full of deception, intrigue, family secrets, and love. Eight years after the ill-fated wedding night, Alexandra is posing as Lizzie Allbright, an ostensibly amnesia-stricken young woman who’s been adopted by a parson. She’s content but resignedly single as she tends to the ill and aged in sleepy Little Thurston. Her uneventful life changes when Steyne arrives in the village. With a family fortune at stake, Lizzie and Xavier’s relationship plays out with a great deal of parry and thrust, as Brooke takes obvious glee in muddling her characters’ lives. (July)