The Madcap Masquerade

A lifetime of watching her beautiful mother cater to the whims of the wealthy, titled patrons who owned her body and soul has soured Maive Barrington on men forever. She is grateful that she is too plain and too clever to attract the attention of the opposite sex. How ironic that desperation over the mountain of debts she inherits when her mother dies forces her to accept the offer of a small fortune to impersonate her missing twin at her betrothal ball. For it is at this ball that the kiss of the prospective bridegroom miraculously awakens all the sleeping passion hidden deep inside her lonely, love-starved heart. But to what avail? The Earl of Lynley is her long-lost sister's prospective bridegroom--not hers. What’s more, she feels certain that when her devious father negotiated his daughter’s marriage contract with the earl he failed to mention that her mother was a notorious London courtesan.

Theodore Hampton, the Earl of Lynley, is a handsome rake who has broken the hearts of the Ton’s most beautiful charmers with his thoughtless love them and leave them attitude. How ironic that to save Ravenswood, his ancestral estate, he must agree to marry a plain, mousey commoner with a huge dowry. But to his surprise, the witty, high-spirited woman who shares his betrothal ball is a far cry from the boring antidote he courted. She challenges him mentally—something no other woman has ever done--and the passionate kiss they share instantly captures his fickle heart and inflames his body. But his prospective bride has only agreed to the marriage of convenience that he, himself, proposed when money was all he wanted from their union. What will it take to convince her to embrace the total mating of mind, soul and body he now envisions?

What a madcap masquerade of lies, trickery and dark, scandalous secrets. Only a capricious whim of fate could have crossed the paths of two such desperate, strong-willed people. What but a heaven-sent miracle can show them how to resurrect a happy-ever-after future from such a murky past?