The trouble with inventing a viscount

Honoria Hartley, the heroine of Lorret's diverting second Liar's Club Regency (after It Had to Be a Duke), uses her childhood betrothal to a viscount she's never met and whom no one can locate as an excuse never to marry. What would she need a husband for? She's able to secure her fortune using her luck and skill at the gambling table. While disguised as a man to do just that in Paris's gambling halls, Honoria meets Oscar Flint, a fellow gambler who desperately needs the funds Honoria wins off him. So when Honoria tells Oscar about her betrothal, he hatches a plan to follow her to her English village and claim to be the Viscount Vandemere himself. He threatens to tell her family about her gambling if she reveals he's an imposter, forcing Honoria to keep up the pretense of their engagement. But along the way, the feigned attraction becomes all too real for both of them and Oscar abandons his blackmail to instead focus on making Honoria happy for the rest of her life. Throughout, Lorret strikes the right balance of humor and swoony romance. The pages fly as this unlikely couple work for their happy ending. Agent: Stefanie Lieberman, Janklow & Nesbit Assoc. (Sept.)

A con artist meets his match with a gambler in disguise. Honoria Hartley never wants to marry or have children, and she's found a clever way to avoid it. Her grandmother betrothed her long ago to Viscount Vandemere, and since no one has ever met the man, she's spent years "clinging to the betrothal contract like a shield," sending herself letters in which "Vandemere" always has an excuse for why he can't yet marry her. As she's exempted herself from the marriage mart, she's freed up considerable time to do things like disguise herself as Signor Cesario, giving herself the freedom to live as a man and especially to gamble. She's wearing her Cesario drag the first time she meets ruthless gambler Oscar Flint, and after she wins a large pot he was counting on, he becomes the first person to realize she's wearing a disguise; only a well-timed kiss allows her to slip away. One year later, he gets his revenge. Honoria is comfortably at home in her normal attire when Oscar reappears, and this time he's the one in disguise--as her fiance. Flint moves into the Vandemere home and openly courts Honoria, and as their attraction is obvious, both are secretly happy to goad the other. But there's a good reason Flint escaped to the country to act as Vandemere, and it may put all of them in danger. In the second book in her Liar's Club series, Lorret turns her attention to the middle Hartley sister. As usual, her writing sparkles, and it's a delight that Honoria and Oscar can admit their attraction early on, providing for many witty exchanges (and a few spicy ones as well). The plot, however, droops a bit under unnecessary complexity--it's tempting to think of that as a nod to Shakespeare, given the Hartley family's theatrical leanings, but it doesn't quite hold together. Still, the emotional depths of both Honoria and Oscar, the quasi-enemies-to-lovers chemistry between the two, and the charms of the Hartley family provide more than enough reasons for readers to roll the dice on this one. An enjoyable romance from a Regency fan favorite. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.