One high-stakes wager. Two stubborn hearts.
After a humiliating debut three years earlier, Lady Prudence Davies decided to embrace her status as a wallflower. She longs to be declared a spinster so she can live her life as she wishes. But when her fellow wallflowers become targets of a band of rogues, Prudence ventures out of the shadows to aid them.
Silas Hayward, Viscount Winstead, and his friends make an unfortunate wager, one that Silas deeply regrets. If his family didn’t so desperately need the winnings, he would’ve found a way to bow out. Twelve balls and a dance with twelve different wallflowers. How hard could it be?
Prudence has no intention of allowing any of the rogues to win the ridiculous wager–not when she’s one of the twelve. While a steamy kiss with Silas has her reconsidering her opinion of rogues, she refuses to allow her friends to be hurt.
Silas is knocked sideways as he comes to know Prudence as he tries to convince her to dance with him. She stands between him and the prize, and suddenly there’s more at stake than the money, yet he can’t possibly choose her over helping his family.
Who will win the wallflower wager?
This is a standalone novella loosely connected to The Mayfair Literary League series, which starts with A Matter of Convenience.
Review:
Such a sweet romance! (Of course with a bit of steam too…but really, these two are just too cute together <3)
Silas and Prudence’s story is a friends-to-lovers story that is loosely connected to the author’s Mayfair Literary League but would also work just fine as a standalone. When Prudence is recruited by her great aunt to assist Silas in planning a party for his grandmother, she doesn’t expect to find that the man she assumed was a bit of a rogue was actually such a nice guy. She’s intrigued by his inventions, and the man himself. But Silas needs to marry an heiress, and Prudence isn’t one. So they have no future…right?
Silas didn’t expect to be drawn to a “wallflower,” but here he is. He’s also got the ill-founded “wallflower wager” hanging over his head. Can he confess to the woman he’s beginning to love and not lose her? Will it even matter, if he has nothing to offer?
I enjoyed watching them grow closer, and really liked the solutions they came up with to resolve all of their dilemmas together. Fingers crossed that Prudence’s cousin Millie is getting a MLL book soon!
Rating: 4 stars / A-
I voluntarily reviewed an Advance Reader Copy of this book.