The Gentleman’s Wager: a Regency Bl

Bath is a city that feeds on wagers, and no one plays its games harder than Francis Lovelace and the Earl of Shaftesbury. Lovelace, dazzling viscount and master of the Season, makes and breaks reputations with a smile; Shaftesbury, ruthless gambler and political cynic, prefers to stake his money on blood, scandal and the ruin of softer men.Once, they were each other’s sharpest pleasure and most dangerous mistake. Now they circle as rivals, laying private bets on the futures of everyone around them: a naive country cousin, a reforming clergyman, an old rake who made them both. As wagers escalate and the city grows hungry for a new scandal, Lovelace and Shaftesbury must decide whether to keep using each other as weapons, or admit that the only stake that ever mattered between them was their own hearts.