Scheming social climber Alexa may be humbly born. But only a title, mansion and family tiara will do. Befriending feckless aristo Florrie (three surnames plus black hole where her brain should be) means the grandest doors swing open and the prince of her dreams is in sight. But has Florrie’s mother, the formidable Lady Annabel, rumbled what Alexa is up to? Beautiful but penniless student Polly, meanwhile, is in love.
Venetia Lanyon, beautiful, intelligent and independent, lives in comfortable seclusion in rural Yorkshire with her precocious brother Aubrey. Her future seems safe and predictable: either marriage to the respectable but dull Edward Yardley, or a life of peaceful spinsterhood. But when she meets the dashing, dangerous rake Lord Damerel, her well-ordered life is turned upside down, and she embarks upon...