The Rogue Not Taken

Author’s Note

The inspiration for this and all Scandal & Scoundrel books is modern celebrity gossip, something that readers who—like me—have a secret love for US Weekly, Defamer.com, and the Tattler will notice right away. Indeed, it’s hard to imagine a more similar time to ours than the early 1800s, when gossip rags were as plentiful and as powerful as they are today. While Scandal & Scoundrel is my creation, there were dozens of scandal sheets during Sophie and King’s time, many of which were just as scintillating then as they are now. I’m indebted to the vast, fascinating collections of the New York Public Library and the British Library. In less scintillating reading, Peter Nicholson, Esq. was real and did publish A Popular and Practical Treatise on Masonry and Stone-cutting in 1828—the perfect text with which Sophie could tease King on their travels.

When I began this book, I had no intention of anyone being shot. But Sophie is, after all, a Dangerous Daughter. I’m indebted to Dr. Daniel Medel for many reasons this year, not the least of which is his willingness to answer my panicked calls about nineteenth-century medicine and only sometimes tell me that Sophie was going to die. As always, errors are entirely my own.

This book is nothing without my tremendous editor, Carrie Feron, the wonderful Nicole Fischer, and the remarkable team at Avon Books, including Liate Stehlik, Shawn Nicholls, Pam Jaffee, Caroline Perny, Tobly McSmith, Carla Parker, Brian Grogan, Frank Albanese, Eileen DeWald, and Eleanor Mikucki. I’m so grateful to this team, and to my agent, Steven Axelrod, for making Sophie and King happen.

Thanks to Ally Carter for a long-ago bequeathal of the title The Rogue Not Taken, and to Lily Everett, Carrie Ryan, Sophie Jordan, and Linda Francis Lee for faith and cheerleading on this one. You’ll never know how much it meant, or how much I treasure your friendship.

And, as ever, thank you to Eric—the finest tart thief I know.