One Kiss to Compromise a Marquess

The story

Bristol, 1816. The Great Winter has frozen the city into a soot-choked crucible, and Thane, Marquess of Kershaw, rules it with mathematical ice. His industrial empire is flawless — because it was engineered that way by Sabine Laurent, his illegitimate shadow, the brilliant strategist who built his fortune from the dark and asked for nothing, not even her name on the books.

Then Sabine does the unthinkable: she orchestrates a scandalous public kiss that shatters Thane's reputation in a single evening. To him, it is the purest betrayal — a knife from the one person he never thought to guard against. What he doesn't know is that her sabotage was a mercy, a cold gambit to sever a lethal alliance before it swallowed him whole. And the fire that kiss ignited refuses to obey either of their calculations.

With a ruthless syndicate closing in, the tycoon and his saboteur are forced back into partnership — a tactical dance through fog-choked alleys and coal-dusted conspiracies, where every clipped exchange carries a decade of unsaid things. As the line between protector and predator dissolves, cold necessity bleeds into visceral obsession. Amid gunpowder and ash, they face one question: will this hunger save the empire, or burn it to the ground?

Tropes in this book

Secret identity Betrayal with a motive Industrial Regency Enemies to lovers

A heroine who ran his empire from the shadows, a hero who never saw her coming, and a betrayal that was actually a declaration.

Spice level

Steamy — around 3.5 out of 5. A decade of suppressed tension between two brilliant, wounded people — when it finally breaks, it breaks hot.