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- Parts 7
The 1814 season ended in ruins for Miss Penelope Featherington. Within the span of a single night, she lost her best friend to a devastating secret and overheard the man she loved crush her heart with a careless remark. Fleeing into the shadows of the garden, she expected to find only tears. Instead, she found him.
Nathaniel Hawthorne, the elusive heir to a northern dukedom, has no taste for the glittering insincerity of London. He prefers the rugged moors of Chester and the truth of classical poetry. But in the dark of a Mayfair garden, he is captivated by a weeping wallflower with a razor-sharp wit-a woman who sees the world as clearly as he does.
After a year of secret letters, they reunite in 1815. Penelope is desperate to escape her mother's house, and Nathaniel is desperate to escape the marriage-minded mamas of the Ton. The solution is simple: a fake courtship. He will provide the social status to bring her suitors, and she will provide the shield to keep him solitary.
But as the game begins, the lines between pretense and passion blur.