Career diplomat Alec Halsey has been elevated to a marquessate he doesn't want. His lover has decided she won't marry him after all. What's more, the suspicion that he murdered his brother still lingers in London drawing rooms. So returning to London after seven months' seclusion may have been a mistake.

It's 1763. Career diplomat Alec Halsey returns to London and the shocking news his estranged elder brother, the Earl of Delvin, has not only killed his friend in a duel but become engaged to the woman he had hoped to marry. When Alec reluctantly attends a weekend house party to celebrate his brother's engagement he gets more than he bargained for when a lady's maid is murdered, the bride-to-be is attacked, and a guest is shot dead.

1740s France and England - the age of hedonism and enlightenment. Renard, Duke of Roxton, is wealthy beyond measure. Arrogant and self assured, his heart remains his own. Optimistic and headstrong, Antonia Moran is determined to flee the Court of Versailles with the Duke's unwitting assistance. Roxton is an unlikely savior - arrogant, promiscuous, and sinister. Antonia's unquestioning belief in him may just be his salvation, and her undoing.

London, 1786. Lord Henri-Antoine has returned from the Grand Tour to a life of privilege and excess. A vast inheritance allows him every indulgence, free from responsibility. Yet, Henri-Antoine maintains a well-ordered existence, going to great lengths to conceal an affliction few understand and many fear. Miss Lisa Crisp is a penniless orphan who relies on the charity of relatives to keep her from the poorhouse. Intelligent and unflappable, Lisa will not allow poverty to define her. She leads a useful life working among the sick poor.

Hampshire, England, 1777: As Antonia’s world collapses around her, in swaggers a handsome stranger to completely upend her life. Little does she realize, this rugged merchant of mayhem is precisely what she needs.