The Seduction of the Crimson Rose

Determined to secure another London Season without assistance from her new brother-in-law, Mary accepts a secret assignment from Lord Vaughn on behalf of the Pink Carnation: to infiltrate the ranks of the dreaded French spy, the Black Tulip, before he and his master can stage their planned invasion of England. Every spy has a weakness, and for the Black Tulip that weakness is black-haired women - his 'petals' of the Tulip. A natural at the art of seduction, Mary easily catches the attention of the French spy, but Lord Vaughn never anticipates that his own heart will be caught as well. Fighting their growing attraction, impediments from their past and, of course, the French, Mary and Vaughn find themselves lost in the shadows of a treacherous garden of lies. As our modern-day heroine, Eloise Kelly, digs deeper into England's Napoleonic-era espionage, she becomes even more intwined with Colin Selwick, the descendent of her spy subjects.

A native of New York City, Lauren Willig has been writing romances ever since she got her hands on her first romance novel at the age of six. Like Eloise Kelly, Lauren is the proud possessor of an unfinished Harvard History department dissertation, and spent a year poring over old documents at the British Library before abandoning the academic life for the more lucrative world of law. Once Lauren received her JD magna cum laude from Harvard Law School, she practised as a litigation associate at a large New York firm but decided that book deadlines and doc review didn't mix and departed the law for a new adventure in full-time writerdom.