Of Ichor and Propriety

Synopsis

In the glittering Society of Regency-era London, the great Olympian families reign supreme as the undisputed ton: the Zeussons command Parliament, the Poseidons hold naval dominion, and the shadowy Hadleys preside over estates no mortal surveyor has ever fully mapped. It is a truth universally acknowledged among ambitious mothers that a young lady of mysterious parentage, however handsome her face or sharp her wit, must be in want of a divine sponsor—or she shall have no prospects at all. Miss Petra Calloway, twenty years old and freshly arrived from the Devonshire countryside, makes her debut at Almack's Assembly Rooms with little fortune, considerable intelligence, and no knowledge whatsoever that her deceased father was none other than the sea-god Poseidon himself. The revelation arrives, as all catastrophes do, at the worst possible moment: during a quadrille, when she accidentally parts the punch bowl like a small inland sea and earns the astonished attention of the entire room, including the cold, magnificent, and insufferably proud Lord Darian Stormcroft—heir to Zeus's earthly seat and the last gentleman she would wish to impress. When Zeus's sacred signet ring vanishes from the Olympian vault and war among the divine families threatens to shatter the London Season entirely, Petra is dispatched on a frantic quest across Bath, the Scottish Highlands, and the treacherous Underworld ballrooms of the Hadley estate. Accompanied by her anxious companion Mr. Grover Fennwick and the impossibly competent Miss Athena Chase, Petra must outmaneuver scheming half-bloods, survive divine matchmaking schemes, and confront the charming traitor hiding in plain sight—all while managing her mother's matrimonial correspondence and deciding whether Lord Stormcroft's insufferable correctness might, upon longer acquaintance, constitute something alarmingly close to virtue.