And Only To Deceive

And Only To Deceive (#116) is Tasha Alexander's first entry in her Lady Emily Ashton suspense series. 

Set in England in the 1890s, Lady Emily admits that she married mainly to get away from her mother.  Viscount Ashton seemed pleasant enough, but she barely knows him when he dies on an African safari.  Mourning is serious business for a widow in Victorian London and after nearly two years, Emily is looking for something to occupy her for the remainder of her enforced seclusion.  When one of Phillip's old friends wants to publish one of his papers on classical Greece as a tribute to Phillip, Emily finds herself intrigued by a side of her dead husband that she never knew.  As she delves into Phillip's papers and journals looking for that monograph, she finds that her husband was truly in love with her and her own feelings about him change. 

He was an avid collector of Greek antiquities, but Emily slowly comes to suspect that he was involved in a profitable art forgery ring along with his best friend, Colin Hargreaves.  Emily must unravel the mystery of her husband's character as she evades her mother's machinations to marry her off again as soon as she is out of mourning.  She is willing to defy some conventions, but she may be playing with fire if she flouts them all. 

This is very much a novel of manners, somewhat in the vein of Deanna Raybourne's excellent series.  I'm glad I have the next four books in Tasha Alexander's series sitting on my bookshelf so I can find out just what does happen to Lady Emily in her less than conventional future.