The Marquis Who Musn’t

Milan continues her late-19th-century small-town England–set “Wedgeford Trials” series, following The Duke Who Didn’t, with the elegantly told story of Naomi Kwan and Liu Ji Kai. Naomi longs for more freedom than her family offers, particularly to be allowed to enroll in an ambulance course. Year after year, she is told no, until one year, she sneaks off to simply sign up, only to be denied by the course administrators—she needs a man to approve the enrollment. Determined, she pulls a stranger into a lie, proclaiming that she is engaged to him. The gentleman plays along, oddly at ease with the ruse. Perhaps because Kai is not really a stranger to Naomi, and the engagement story is not really a lie. He knows something that Naomi does not, that they were engaged as children and that he is back in town to redeem his family—and enact a long-planned lie of his own.