A Most Reckless Wager

He wagered he could win her heart in a month. He never expected to lose his own.

Julian Marlowe, the restless second son of an earl, has spent his whole life being told he's ornamental rather than essential. So when his oldest friend Frederick Wray won't stop gushing about "the most sensible woman in England," Julian makes a reckless bet with an even more reckless friend: he can win a proposal from any sufficiently sensible woman inside a month. He doesn't yet realize the woman his friend has just named is Wray's own secretly intended bride.

Ophelia Ashworth has spent two years living quietly in her sister's scandal-shadow, promised - if not yet publicly - to a good, steady man. She has no intention of losing her head over Sir Edmund Whitfield's charming, restless cousin.

She loses it anyway.

When a drunken slip at a county assembly exposes the wager to the whole room - and drags Wray's private understanding into the wreckage alongside it - only a fake betrothal can save Ophelia's reputation from a second ruin her family cannot survive. Julian has one season to prove that whatever began as a careless bet became, somewhere along the way, entirely and terrifyingly real.

A deeply emotional story of guilt, guarded trust, and the particular courage it takes to confess everything before it costs you the one thing you actually wanted.

Perfect for readers who love a fake betrothal that becomes the real thing, and enemies-to-lovers with a hero who has everything to prove and nothing left to hide.

A standalone romance with a guaranteed HEA, and Book Two of The Ashworth Ruin Series.

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