Seventeen-year-old Jewel Combs is not a lady. She is a guttersnipe living hand-to-mouth on London's mean streets when she meets a dying man who marries her to spite his aristocratic family. Cold, aloof, breathtakingly handsome, Sebastian, Earl of Moorland, is the head of that family, and when widowed Jewel belligerently presents herself to him as his newest relative his inclination is to throw her back out on the streets. But instead he accepts her into the family to spite his icy, unloving mother, on the condition that Jewel let him turn her into Julia Stratham, lady of the town. Sparks fly between them as Jewel becomes Julia, a stunning beauty, and Sebastian finds himself falling head over heels in love with his own creation. But Sebastian has learned in a hard school that love is not to be trusted....



Winner of Romantic Times' Reviewers' Choice Award for Best Historical Romantic Novel

Winner of Affaire de Coeur's award for Best Historical Romance

New York Times, USA Today, and Publisher's Weekly bestseller Karen Robards is the six-time winner of Affaire de Coeur's Silver Pen Award for favorite romance author.

“Behold the wondrous star in the firmament of historical romance that is Karen Robards. With each new book her luster intensifies....” – Romantic Times

“Ms. Robards has the marvelous talent to zero in on the heart of erotic fantasy. She seems to know instinctively our most secret thoughts and the dreams up the perfect scenario to give them free rein. The result is pure magic.” – RT Book Reviews

“One of the finest, most talented writers of romantic history today.” – Affaire de Coeur

“Karen Robards is one of the most popular voices in women's fiction.” – Newsweek

“Robards is one terrific storyteller.” – Chicago Tribune



About the Author:
Ever since I was a little girl, I’ve loved to write. My first book was a ten-page effort written at age five for my grandmother. Throughout grade school, high school and college I wrote for various school publications. When I was eighteen, my first professionally published piece—a humorous anecdote—appeared in Reader’s Digest. Still, it never occurred to me that I might become a professional writer. I aimed for a career as a lawyer and was actually in law school when I sold my first book. When that happened, the world lost a would-be lawyer and gained a writer. That book, which is still in print, is Island Flame, and it was published when I was twenty-four. Since then, I've written over forty books, which regularly appear on the New York Times, USA Today, and Publisher’s Weekly bestseller lists, among others. The mother of three sons, I read, I write, and I chauffeur children. That’s my life.