The Lady and the Secret Lord

A warning note left at her kitchen door prompts Lady Phoebe Marchmont to take her fruitless search for her missing six-year-old brother, the Earl of Grafton, to newly formed Scotland Yard. Donning a widow's disguise to move freely about London despite her youth and station, she partners with one of the Yard's detectives-in-training, a man she thinks she can command.

Former beat cop Robin Jones jumps at the chance to work a case that could prove him worthy to join the ranks of Scotland Yard's first detectives. But dealing with independent-minded Phoebe Marchmont is more than he bargained for, and finding the missing boy takes him back to his youth as a troubled street urchin when he was one of the Duke of Wenlocke’s lost boys.

Robin and Phoebe's search for her young brother moves from vibrant, decadent Soho to glittering ballrooms and the foggy banks of the Thames, peeling away the disguises of the two stubborn lovers and opening their hearts.

Excerpt

“What am I to call you?” he asked. His voice sounded rough in his ears.

Her chin came up. Her defiant gaze met his. “You mean if you decided to be polite and respectful and observe the distinctions of rank?”

He took a step toward her. “I mean,” he said, “if you decided to observe the proprieties that govern a lady’s behavior, that keep her reputation and her person safe, Lady Phoebe.”

“I don’t like lady,” she said. “It is a title tighter than this corset.”

He laughed. “That corset would fall off you without the padding.” He wished it would. He wanted to see her true waist, to measure it with his hands.

“That’s easy for you to say. You have no restraints. You come and go without anyone remarking your conduct or condemning it. No one requires you to hire a lady’s companion.”

“True,” he said. “A lady’s companion would be a most inconvenient partner for a policeman.”

She stepped out from behind the desk, advancing a little into the room. “If your brother went missing, you would not be obliged to hire a companion merely so that you could attend a musicale while other people searched for him. Well, I’ve had enough of that. Enough of well-meaning people telling me that I should abandon the search and have him declared dead so that I can return to society and take my place as a lady. So, no, you will not call me Lady Phoebe.”