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She wasn’t actually wicked. Just practical... until he came along.

Lady Margot Ashbourne has spent years being practical. When her husband died, leaving her with a crumbling house and three stepdaughters with expensive taste, she did what needed doing: she made them work. She budgeted. She survived.

So what if her youngest stepdaughter ran off with a prince and spread rumors about being locked in coal chutes? Margot has more important things to worry about—like keeping the roof from caving in.

Enter Percival Fairfax, Earl of Thorncroft. Impossibly handsome, irritatingly charming, and in desperate need of someone to restore his ancestral home. He offers her a job, a fortune, and absolutely no romantic complications.

He’s lying about the last part.

As Margot brings Raventhorn Hall back to life, she finds herself increasingly drawn to its owner—a man who builds her pavilions instead of buying her flowers, who values her sharp tongue instead of wishing it were softer, who looks at her like she’s exactly enough just as she is.

But when royal interference and society gossip threaten to rewrite her story once again, Margot must decide: keep playing the villain in someone else’s fairy tale, or finally claim her own happily ever after?

A deliciously witty romance about renovating homes, rewriting narratives, and a “wicked” stepmother who deserves her own fairy tale ending.