Raised in an exclusive boarding school among Fifth Avenue's finest, Meg Davenport has all she's ever needed . . . but none of the things she's wanted most, like family, or dreams of a future that includes anything other than finding a suitable match. So when her distant father dies, she seizes the chance to throw etiquette aside and do as she pleases. Especially when she learns that John Davenport wasn't the wealthy businessman she thought, but one of the Gilded Age's most talented thieves.
The sheltered life Meg Davenport has known at a prestigious school is shattered when her estranged father, Skipjack, dies and the 18-year-old girl discovers that the riches he used to keep her in a life of luxury were illegally gotten. Meg scorns the traditional optionsteaching or marryingavailable to her in late-19th-century New York and inexplicably decides to follow in her con-artist fathers footsteps. In her attempts to bilk the family of two school friends out of their rumored fortune in hidden gold, she finds herself caught in a power struggle between Skipjacks attractive protégé and surrogate son, Ian, and Brewster, another member of her fathers gang of thieves. Ian also is at odds with Skipjacks religious fiancée, Kate, whose unwelcome morals had started to influence his mentor to go straight. In the middle of a growing romance between Meg and Ian, the author (the Great War series) uses a slow-moving, unlikely plot to touch on issues of abandonment, loyalty, faith, and life not always going the way you plan. Agent: Rachelle Gardner. (July) 2012 Reed Business Information