"Miss Evermore is the cleverest young woman of my acquaintance. She cannot, however, tell when a besotted fool is standing right in front of her." ? The Dowager Duchess of Ashworth, in despair

Everyone knows he's London's most charming rogue. Well. Everyone except Miss Evermore.

Typically there is little Miss Thea Evermore enjoys more than a puzzle. But a puzzle in the form of a handsome gaming hell owner was not on her agenda.

Nicholas Gage is, by Thea's reckoning, a highly improbable acquaintance. The proprietor of London's most notorious gaming hell, he ought to have no interest whatsoever in a bespectacled bluestocking with an inheritance too small to mention.

And yet, ever since that unfortunate incident at Vauxhall Gardens, Mr. Gage has taken an alarming interest in Thea's whereabouts.

He's developed the disconcerting habit of turning up wherever she happens to be. He insists on ensuring she has eaten and inquires after her chaperone with alarming frequency.

For a man of his reputation, Nicholas Gage is behaving suspiciously like a mother hen.

Thea can produce only one rational hypothesis. Mr. Gage requires her expertise with his accounts.

Sure enough, he accepts her offer of assistance.

And yet...

One does not typically discuss accounts in darkened carriages. Or moonlit alleys. And while Thea's way with numbers is quite unmatched, it hardly explains why the coldest gambler in London gazes down at her with a wolfish grin.

She is a self-declared spinster. Mocked by gentlemen of the ton. The probability that Nicholas Gage might be courting her is, by every calculation, essentially zero.

Isn't it?

But if Mr. Gage is not, as she assumes, in urgent need of her arithmetic...

Why does the most calculating gambler in London look at her as though he's already lost?

And why is the woman who never wanted a husband suddenly recalculating her odds?

A sweet, standalone Regency romance with witty banter, swoony kisses, and one bluestocking who never saw it coming.