Miss Hartwell Sees Too Much – Paperback

London, May 1854. Eliza Hartwell is a vicar’s daughter in her only good gown, and she has taken the wrong seat at the Marchmont Theatre.

Box eleven is empty, until it is not. Within the hour she has watched a respectable man murder a clerk with a sword cane, and she is holding a dead man’s ticket that says: Trust no one else.

The one man she is told to trust is Lord Sebastian Crowe, a gentleman with a rake’s reputation, a dead friend to avenge and a bad habit of answering questions with silence. To keep her alive he announces, in front of half of London, that she is his betrothed.

The engagement is a lie. The danger is not. As Eliza learns to read a room, play a hand of cards and wear a scandalous crimson gown, she also learns what it costs a man to be known as the worst of the lot when he is not. The murderer sits on the Privy Council. The newspapers are circling. And every evening the pretence gets harder to tell from the truth.

A brooding lord, an innocent witness and a very good reason to stay close. Book 3 of Hearts in Peril.