From Fake Marriage to Forever

Madeline drove her stepdaughter out of the house as a child and let the rest of the family believe her dead. Years later Ruth Sinclair comes back to Veridia's capital under the identity of the chancellor's discarded eldest daughter, meaning to find out what really happened to her grandmother. The household marries her off to Ryan Hayes, the young lord everyone in the capital calls a wastrel, a man who spends his nights at wine houses and his afternoons asleep. The wedding is arranged for reasons that have nothing to do with either of them. Ruth treats the marriage as cover for her investigation and sets about trying to reform her husband's habits while she works the case on the side. Ryan keeps turning up exactly when she is in danger, always with some excuse about passing by. She starts to suspect he is not what he appears. He runs Whisperwind, an intelligence network operating out of the capital, and the drinking and gambling are a costume he put on years ago and never took off. Once she confirms it, the two stop circling each other and start comparing notes, and the case opens out from a private grudge inside the chancellor's household into a conspiracy reaching Madeline and into dealings with a foreign power. Working the investigation together, sharing rooms, arguing over evidence and strategy, the two of them stop performing the marriage and start living something closer to it. Ryan tells her once that if she ever throws him out a window she'll regret it. She says she'll take the risk. He laughs and asks if she really could bear to.