They were cousins, but they looked enough alike to be twins.Life and war separated them, but the years didn't dim the astonishing resemblance.Now Fate suddenly threw them together again -- two beautiful, desirable women playing out a deadly masquerade.Set against the elegance, splendor and gentility of the early 19th-century South, this is a suspenseful tale of high intrigue and dangerous deception.

    All London was agog when Sophia rather than Daphne wed the dashing Earl of Gresham, whose scorn for bookish females was well-known.The marriage was intended as a business arrangement only — to preserve the Earl's fortune and give Sophia financial independence. But what was Sophia to do when she found herself enamoured of her husband, though too proud to admit it? Sophia needed all her wit and womanly wiles in a game of pretense and passion, to make the man she loved, love her.

    Unaware that her great uncle had died, she now became the ward of her distant cousin Gervase, who at twenty-six was only seven years older than she.She, moody, and extremely formal, Gervase was easy prey for Sophia, the elegant family friend who wanted him for herself. And so Gervase was ready to marry Charlotte off to a good and willing suitor — despite their growing feelings for one another.And so it would have gone, until Fate stepped in to sort things out — in a way that was totally unexpected and thoroughly satisfactory to two young lovers...