When Crown Bureau agent Theodore Gray is assigned to infiltrate the ton's most glittering drawing rooms, he expects boredom. What he does not expect is Penelope Stuart, blonde, bespectacled, and apparently decorative, who turns out to be the most dangerously perceptive person in any room she enters.

Penelope has spent years perfecting the art of being underestimated. It is, she will tell you, a remarkably useful skill. So when her brother Nate proposes a fake betrothal to give Theo access to her social circle, she agrees, partly out of loyalty, partly out of curiosity, and partly because Theodore Gray looks at her like a problem he cannot solve, and she finds that entirely too entertaining.

What begins as a convenient arrangement quickly becomes something far more complicated. Because somewhere between decoding gossip at musicales and narrowly escaping disaster at a Duke's ball, Theo stops seeing Penelope's charm as a mask, and starts seeing the woman behind it.

But the conspiracy threatening the Crown is accelerating. And the closer they get to the truth, the more dangerous it becomes, not just to the mission, but to the careful walls they have each built around their hearts.

The Lady Who Played at Love is a witty Regency romance full of sparkling banter, political intrigue, and two people learning that being truly seen is the most terrifying, and most wonderful, thing of all.