A Romance Novel by KJ Charles.
Lord Alexander Pyne-ffoulkes, the Duke of Ilvar's younger son, detests his father and step-mother. Therefore, he hires a pair of jewel thieves to steal a priceless diamond arrangement his father intends to gift to his step-mother for their anniversary.
As the Duke's castle is a difficult target, Alec has to pretend that one of the thieves, the famous Lilywhite Boys, Jerry Crozier, is a gentleman of standing and even more importantly: Alec's best friend.
Quickly, sparks fly between Alec and Jerry, but betrayals are part of the business and the situation is tense...
Has a sequel in Gilded Cage.
Tropes in this book:
- Bad Boss: The turnover rate at Castle Speight is incredibly high, as the Duchess demands she should never even have to see the servants and fires them on the spot for the pettiest of reasons.
- Better to Die than Be Killed: Rather than face the consequences of the two murders, the Duke smothers the Duchess and throws himself out a window.
- Character Overlap: A number of examples from previous series. The extensive Vane family, several of whose members appear in Charles' previous series Society of Gentlemen is mentioned, and Jerry poses as one for the sake of the con. The Countess of Moreton is Greta Starling, the sister of previous protagonist Pen Starling, from An Unsuitable Heir, the final book of the Sins of the Cities trilogy.
- Chronic Evidence Retention Syndrome: Apart from the parure, the safe contains a ring that belonged to the Duchess's first husband, which she could only have obtained by taking it off his body. Alec muses that she is incapable of giving up anything she views as hers, even if it literally puts her life on the line. (While her rank and gender make it unlikely that she would actually hang even if convicted, she still could.)
- Dark Secret: The Duke of Ilvar and his new wife both murdered their spouses so that they could marry one another.
- Dysfunctional Family: Well, Alec's father refuses to acknowledge his children, they hate him, and the less is said about that step-mother the better.
- Hero of Another Story: Susan Lazarus has a not insignificant part in this story, but her main story is told in the sequel Gilded Cage and, her origins, in the semi-prequel An Unnatural Vice. Likewise, the second of the Lilywhite Boys, Templeton Lane, is barely featured and returns in the sequel, and the fence Stan has his own story in The Rat-Catchers Daughter.
- Historical Domain Character: Alec and Jerry run into Princess Sophia Duleep Singh
and her brother at the races. - I Have No Son!: The Duke of Ilvar refuses to acknowledge his children, choosing his wife over them repeatedly.
- Harmful to Minors: Cara found her mother dead when she was ten years old, and realized that her father had murdered her, but was so traumatized by it that she couldn't talk about it for years.
- The Lost Lenore: In a platonic sense. A big part of why Alec decides to make his father pay now is the death of his beloved sister Cara a few months earlier, which might have been averted if their father had lend them just a bit more money to get her to a healthier place.
- Lovable Rogue: Jerry is unrepentantly a career thief (he does only steal from rich people, but that's because he's a jewel thief, and poor people don't have jewels) who Alec repeatedly compares to a hot Satan, but he's charming and has genuine compassion for Alec's situation with his terrible father even before they fall in love.
- Private Detective: Susan Lazarus, maybe the only investigator even the Lilywhite Boys fear.
- Punny Name: The Ilvar seat is called Castle Speight, pronounced "spite" (which is certainly appropriate).
- The Reveal: Alec always planned to double cross the Lilywhite Boys and blackmail them into opening the Duchess' safe, in hopes of finding proof of the murder she committed.
- Self-Fulfilling Prophecy: The Duchess always feared that high society, and her new stepchildren, would not accept her because she's a lower-class woman who married a duke. So she rubs her wealth and rank in everyone's face all the time, and is in general a huge Jerkass. (It doesn't help that are some nasty skeletons in the closet regarding her first marriage.) So yes, high society hates having her around and people only invite her to things when they absolutely have to, because she's totally unbearable. Alec notes that there are plenty of "music-hall brides" among the nobility who are now well-accepted after the initial classist hiccups, because they're actually nice to people.
- Starving Artist: Played With. Alec's work as an illustrator allows him to pay for a place to live and he doesn't appear to want for food or clothes, so he is by no means actually starving, but given his station as the son of a Duke people still consider him as such because he has an actual (gasp!) job.
- The Suffragette: Alec mentions that Cara and Susan met in a Suffragette meeting, implying they were (and in Susan's case probably still is) both this.
