Caught in the Viscount's Bed

The story

Apothecary Verity Templeton is running for her life. Framed for a murder she did not commit, she flees into the lethal Welsh mountains with a killing frost on her heels — and breaks into the grim isolation of Malden Manor to survive the night. What she finds inside is worse than the cold: the ruthless Viscount Malden is dying, slowly and deliberately, of a meticulous poison someone in his own house keeps pouring.

He should hand her to the law. She should let him die. Instead, they strike a bargain sharp enough to cut them both: Verity will use her apothecary's skill to unmask his assassin, and Giles will shield her from the gallows the only way a scandal-hardened viscount can — by claiming her as his own. It is a performance. A convenient fiction. Right up until the blizzard seals the manor shut and there is nowhere to perform except by candlelight, beneath heavy furs, close enough to feel his pulse.

As the hunt for the poisoner turns inward, room by room, the line between masquerade and reality dissolves entirely. Verity came to Malden Manor to escape one death sentence. She never expected the true danger to be the visceral hunger of a viscount who has decided — against all reason, against all society — that he refuses to let her go.

Tropes in this book

Forced proximity Enemies to lovers Blackmail bargain Snowed-in

A snowbound manor, a fake claiming, and two people who trusted each other exactly as far as the bargain required — until they didn't.

Spice level

Steamy — around 3.5 out of 5. High-tension slow burn that pays off on the page, wrapped in a full emotional storyline and an earned happily-ever-after.