Catherine Sterling arrives in London in 1815, dressed in deep mourning for a husband she married in secret and no one has heard of. She carries documents of marriage, property deeds, and just enough wealth to ensure social invisibility — not poverty, but not prominence. She takes a modest townhouse in an unfashionable corner of Mayfair and begins to systematically infiltrate the drawing rooms of power, not through beauty or flirtation but through precise conversation, flawless memory, and a deep knowledge of every scandal the ton has whispered away. Her true objective is revenge against Thomas Ashford, the Earl of Blackthorne, whose recklessness destroyed her family a decade earlier when Catherine was too young and too powerless to stop it. To execute her vengeance, Catherine must navigate the rigid social structures of Regency England, the genuine dangers of being an unattached woman with inexplicable independence, and the complication of Marcus Ashford — Thomas's younger brother and the only person in London who begins to suspect her agenda — while also contending with the widows, wives, and ambitious young women of the season who either fear her or want to destroy her.
