He could be making much more money as a barrister, but he is forever being talked into taking on the hardship cases of widows and orphans. How much fun would it be to pull one over on the ton? And while he is a driven man, he is also a kind one. He knows this is a wild scheme, likely to blow up in his face, but a part of him relishes the sheer recklessness of it. Gideon was a fun guy before he developed his Master Plan. He takes her and Alice, along with his friend Colonel Pickering, I mean Lord Kilmartin, to Aster Park to teach her the finer points of the social world with the plan to then pass her off as Kilmartin’s distant cousin. Gideon quickly sees that the beautiful Lily has the raw material to set the ton on its ear and send Lady Constance into a frenzy. When Lily is caught picking a pocket, Gideon is on hand to save her, impulsively paying his last £30 to keep her out of prison and insert her into his Master Plan. Now, with both parents deceased, Lily has resorted to picking pockets as the best way to have money and be to available to care for her ten year old sister, Alice.

Masters, the daughter of a curate, did her best to instill gentility in her own daughters, teaching them to read and write and speak correctly. Giles’s slums when her ne’er-do-well father lost what little money they had.

What Gideon needs is another woman to be interested in him to spur Lady Constance’s resolve to have Aster Park.

Gideon decides that what she needs is a healthy dose of competition, for she hates to lose. Though it may not be enough – there are other suitors sniffing at Lady Constance’s heels. He acknowledges that he is aiming very high indeed by courting the daughter of a politically influential marquis, but he has an “in” – Lady Constance covets being mistress of Aster Park, Gideon’s future estate and one of England’s grandest properties. It helps that his uncle has unexpectedly succeeded to a barony and that Gideon is his heir. A man of fairly modest beginnings, he earned a reputation as a winning barrister in court and finds himself on the short list of candidates for a post in the Exchequer. I was looking forward to reading her second novel, and while I felt it also had some problems toward the end, I liked To Love a Thief, a Regency-era Pygmalion story, even more. I enjoyed Julie Anne Long’s debut novel The Runaway Duke, though I felt it sagged a bit in the last third.

To Love a Thief by Julie Anne Long