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mind—of the pretty young woman wearing a Marie Antoinette costume with such sweetness, it made his teeth ache to remember it. By the age of nineteen, she’d grown into a classic beauty—bow-shaped lips, thick lashes, high cheekbones. But beyond her looks, there’d been nothing classic about Minerva.
    He still couldn’t believe the saucy wench had plagued him about what he was doing at Newmarsh’s and then had blackmailed him into kissing her. He still couldn’t believe what had happened when he’d given her the kind of kiss meant to teach her a lesson about the dangers of tempting a rogue.
    Somehow he’d forgotten she was his best friend’s sister. That he was a dissipated second son at the beginning of a shaky career, in no condition to take on a sweetheart, much less a wife. Somehow the kiss had become bigger, more dangerous . . . more intoxicating. She’d made him want and yearn and think the unthinkable.
    She still did.
    A pity that she hated him now. She’d made that perfectly clear in her books, laying him out on the pages in the guise of fiction, skewering him even as she circled ever nearer to his secrets.
    He’d first been alerted to the problem at the Valentine’s Ball they’d both attended a few months ago. Until then, he’d never read her novels. He’d had enough trouble putting their kiss behind him without having her voice in his head.
    But the dance they’d shared had stoked the fire anew. They’d danced around each other in their conversation, layering innuendo upon innuendo until his blood ran hot and her remarks grew sharper, and he’d feared he might be reckless enough to do something foolish. Like whisk her out onto a balcony and kiss her senseless.
    After it was over, he’d been left aroused, angry, and confused. Until that night he’d assumed that she’d forgotten about him, that his callous remarks when they’d kissed had squelched anything she might have felt. Discovering that they hadn’t had sent him to her books. And that’s when he’d discovered what Minerva was up to.
    He’d put off doing something about it, hoping that her grandmother’s recent demands might keep her too occupied to write anymore.
    But here was a new installment. He could no longer ignore the problem of Minerva. What if she started including allusions to his activities that night at Newmarsh’s town house? Anyone in the judicial system who connected him to the theft would realize he’d been the one to inform upon Newmarsh and his partner, Sir John Sully. Then it wouldn’t take much to connect him to other cases for the Home Office, and those he’d informed upon would set out to ruin him. They’d start by ending his chance of becoming King’s Counsel.
    “You haven’t even reached the pertinent part yet,” Ravenswood said, jolting him from his thoughts. “Go to the page I told you.”
    Giles found it and immediately noticed the two paragraphs in a different font at the bottom. The first was about Lady Minerva’s connection to the Sharpe family, something that only she would have the audacity to include. The bloodywoman refused to take a pseudonym—it was a bone of contention between her and her grandmother.
    But it was the next paragraph that left him staring in shock:
Dear Readers,
If you wish to read future installments of this book, you must help me with a troublesome domestic situation that has arisen in my life. I suddenly find myself in dire need of a husband, preferably one who possesses a tolerance for authoresses of gothic fiction. To that end, I ask that you send any of your unmarried brothers, cousins, or acquaintances to Halstead Hall on June 20, where I will be conducting interviews for the position of husband. I thank you for your support.
    Regards,
Lady Minerva Sharpe

    The twentieth of June? That was today, damn it!
    “Amusing, isn’t it?” Ravenswood said. “My wife laughed for a full ten minutes. What a clever joke.”
    “Not a joke,” Giles retorted. “Her