Penny Barclay thought she could trust those closest to her. Her mother had been a paragon of virtue, a woman of sense and ingenuity in Penny’s eyes. Lou had been Penny’s friend, her confidante, her mentor. But both of them had kept dangerous secrets. Now, Penny finds herself trapped in the capital with the evidence Prince Aiden, Lord of the Underworld, needs.

Christopher Egan, heir to the notorious Prestwick Earldom, is one of London’s most scandalous rakes. He’s never credited the gossips’ claim that fate cast an ancient curse on every successive Earl of Prestwick as punishment for their wickedness, but once he inherits the earldom after his infamous uncle’s untimely demise, it looks as if he may be the next to lose his head. Determined to cheat the curse and avoid his ancestors’ grisly fate, Kit abandons his life of merry debauchery and embarks on a London season to wed the lady he’s long been promised to.

Everyone thinks LYRA MCKENDRICK is magic. She’s not, for the record, just a lawyer who predicted a few outcomes that were blown out of proportion in the robust Townsend Harbor rumor mill. After a messy breakup in which she lost her thriving practice, she’s returned to her hometown to lick her wounds and is persuaded by a local town cook to capitalize on her cringe-worthy reputation by running the local new-age shop.