From the bestselling, award-winning author of Vanity and Violet comes a lush adventure as darkly sensual as velvet. Clad in black velvet and posing as a widowed French comtesse, Gabrielle de Beaucaire had returned to England for one purpose only--to ruin the man responsible for her young lover's death. But convincing the forbidding Nathaniel Praed, England's greatest spymaster, that she would make the perfect agent for his secret service would not be easy. And even after Gabrielle had lured the devastatingly attractive lord to her bed, she would have to contend with his distrust--and with the unexpected hunger that his merest touch aroused.