The Regency Was Not All Ballrooms

Regency romance gives us so many irresistible things.

Silk gowns. Candlelight. Carriages in the mist. Drawing rooms full of sharp words and sharper glances. Gaming tables where fortunes change hands. Ballrooms where one dance can alter the course of a life.

I love all of that.

Truly, I do.

There is a reason I keep returning to this era. It is beautiful on the surface and fascinating underneath it. The rules were elaborate. The manners were polished. The scandals were delicious. And every room had a door someone was not supposed to open.

But the Regency was never only ballrooms.

It was also kitchens.

Staff passages.

Back staircases.

Shopfronts with names painted carefully on glass.

And places like the Lyon’s Den, where the glittering world above stairs depends entirely on the people working, watching, cooking, guarding, listening, calculating, and surviving below it.

That is the world I wanted to step into with The Lyon’s Sweet Temptation.

If you know my Lyon’s Den books, you already know Mrs. Bessie Dove-Lyon, the Black Widow of Whitehall. She runs a Regency-era gambling hell with more power, secrets, and nerve than most men in London would know what to do with.

At the Lyon’s Den, wagers are made. Reputations tremble. Lovers find themselves cornered by fate. And Mrs. Dove-Lyon always knows far more than anyone realizes.

But in this book, I wanted to ask a different question.

What happens when the danger does not merely come to the gaming tables?

What happens when it walks straight into the house?

The Lyon’s Sweet Temptation is about Rosine Cassis, a Jewish baker from Alsace, and Sander, a Jewish chess master and one of the Den’s protectors. They are not dukes and debutantes. They are not moving through London from one assembly room to the next, wondering who will ask for the next dance.

They are working.

They are watching.

They are hiding parts of themselves because the world has taught them that visibility can be dangerous.

And still, they want what anyone would want.

A home.

A future.

A place to belong.

A life where love does not require disappearance.

The most interesting stories often begin where the ballroom ends.

Rosine’s world is heat, yeast, cardamom, sugar, lemon peel, and careful hands. Her pastries tempt the same patrons who may never bother to ask who made them. But her baking is not merely pretty. It is not decorative. It is her skill, her livelihood, her pride, and her plan for independence.

She dreams of her own bakery.

Her own sign.

Her own name on the door.

And for a woman like Rosine, that is not a small dream.

It is everything.

Sander’s world is different, but just as dangerous. He understands rooms the way a chess player understands a board. He notices exits, threats, patterns, traps, and the small moves other people overlook. He does not protect loudly. He protects by seeing what others miss.

And because this is the Lyon’s Den, chess belongs beautifully in the middle of the story.

A chess match looks civilized. Quiet, even. Two people sit across a board and move carved pieces while everyone pretends it is only a game.

But every move is a threat.

Every sacrifice has a cost.

Every advantage has to be earned.

That is the Regency I love writing most: the one where wit matters, where appearances deceive, where a quiet person may be the most dangerous one in the room.

Of course, there is still romance. Let me tell you about that…