My Fake Rake The Union of the Rakes

Lady Grace Wyatt is a wallflower by choice. She spends her time on scientific work and has little patience for the matches society expects of her. Then a handsome, celebrated naturalist comes home from abroad, and for once she wants him to notice her.

Her plan is to build the ideal man from scratch. He will court her in public and draw the naturalist's eye. Her colleague Sebastian Holloway fits the part: an anthropologist who wears spectacles and lives in books. He agrees because the arrangement suits his own research into English society.

Grace coaches him in secret lessons on how to behave like a rogue, and the two stage showy flirtations in company. Under the performance, her friendship with Sebastian turns into real attraction, and it arrives at a bad moment. She has asked him to help her marry someone else.

Sebastian is already in love with her. The bargain is nearly finished, and she still has her eye on another man. When he faces losing her for good, he has to decide whether to tell her the truth, at risk to his future and his heart.

This is a Regency romance with a fake-courtship setup, a makeover thread and a friends-to-lovers turn. It is the first book in the Union of the Rakes series, which takes inspiration from classic 1980s films such as The Breakfast Club.