Lady B may have married Bluebeard; she may have fallen in love with a gorgeous, grumpy solicitor; she may have met a ghost and survived to tell the tale! New York Times and USA TODAY bestselling author Eloisa James delights with witty historical romance with a gothic twist.
Intrigued? Read on to discover the synopsis and an excerpt from The Last Lady B by Eloisa James, which releases on May 12th 2026.
In the depths of winter, Lady Genevieve Hughes, her pet piglet, and her septuagenarian husband travel to a haunted abbey in the Scottish Highlands. Evie is excited to meet a ghost (perhaps one of her husband’s three previous wives), but didn’t expect the funny, quirky guests to become the friends she’s never had. And she certainly didn’t imagine meeting Sir Godric Everly, a sardonic, witty solicitor who loathes her husband.
Yet as secrets and lies turn Evie’s world upside down, Sir Godric becomes the one person whom she can trust.
When ghosts, multiple wills, and a shocking marriage certificate bring Lord Burnsby’s past crashing into his present, Burnsby promptly dies, leaving Evie free to remarry…though as a virgin wife, now a virgin widow, she is more unnerved by the marriage bed than a spectral visit.
More importantly, she has to figure out whose identity is false, whose vows are dishonorable, whose truths could destroy her reputation—and where her heart belongs.
EXCERPT
Chapter One
The village of Sifton
December 6
I often find myself comparing my past and present life, perhaps because I haven’t yet been married for a year. At this hour in the morning, unmarried Lady Genevieve would likely have been strolling in Hyde Park, whereas Lady Burnsby was making her way down Sifton’s only street—wading through a sea of piglets. I was midway across cobblestones when a stream of small pink bodies flowed around the corner, reached me, and abruptly began folding their legs and lying down.
From the nobility to the piggery.
It had a certain je ne sais quoi, like flaunting French in a Scottish village.
Baby pigs, by the way, are not hideous. One of the few still on his feet was snuffling around my shoe (blue, heeled, embroidered with pansies). I tried to nudge him away, but he sat down and leaned against my ankle, eyes closed.
The swineherd planted his crook and gave me a toothy grin. “They’ll be awake in a minute. The last five-week-old suckling pigs of the season will fetch a pretty price at market.”
Market?
The little chap slid down my ankle and sprawled across my slipper, fast asleep. In case you don’t know, hogs and ladies do not inhabit the same universe. Pigs are like excrement or the bubonic plague: regrettable, never mentioned.
The piglet had surprisingly long, curling eyelashes and a sweet turned-up nose.
Market?
“I’ll take this one.” I bent down and scooped it into the crook of my arm, just like a baby. He snorted, but his eyes didn’t open. One ear fell against my arm like a scrap of pink velvet.
My husband emerged from the apothecary but wisely remained in the doorway. I wish I could say that he was habitually wise, but that would be a lie.
“Lady Burnsby!” he squealed, quite shocked.
The swineherd peered at me. “That’s a wee sow, yer ladyship. A female.”
“I shall name her Peony,” I said. The piglet was still sleeping peacefully, her front legs curled. “She will be a pet. My pet.”
“People may find your choice peculiar,” Burnsby remarked, having gingerly picked his way across the street, avoiding porcine nappers.
“Peculiar” is anathema to my husband, along with all the other actions and reactions that might brand a woman unladylike.
I shrugged. Shrugging is vulgar (anathema!), but I find it an enjoyable sensation.
“Come along, then,” Burnsby said, giving up and waving at our coachman. Once the piglet was consigned to a groom and we were back on the road, he began crooning “Joy to the World.” After their only child was born on December 25, his elderly parents labeled him their Miracle, which may explain why he sings Christmas hymns year-round.
He has never claimed aloud to be the second Christ child, but his belief in his own judgment is never shaken.
As inviolable as if heaven-sent.
Ignoring the musical accompaniment, I began reading a new novel, aptly set in a haunted abbey. As every avid reader knows, abbeys inevitably offer ghostly accoutrement, along with an ancient housekeeper with a malign countenance, subterranean passages, a will in a secret drawer, a madwoman (or two), a scowling villain, perhaps even a crafty devil.
So much to look forward to.
Except the golden-locked hero. I find men lackluster, if not deplorable, qualities unaffected by their coloring.
“Well, here we are,” Burnsby said before he launched into the fourth verse of “Joy to the World.” We hadn’t arrived; that’s one of the nonsense phrases he drops into any silence.
It’s possible that his first wife, rumored to have taken her life (if she wasn’t murdered), may have chanced the great hereafter rather than endure his daily renditions of Yuletide hymns.
I am surprised that none of his spouses resorted to homicide.
To be fair, it’s possible that one or more lost her life in an attempt to stifle a jolly rendition of his favorite hymn, “A Virgin Unspotted.”
After another week, during which the sound of carriage wheels competed with my husband’s baritone, our coach finally rumbled through colossal stone walls that seemed to anticipate a siege, but who would besiege a Benedictine abbey in a Scottish mountain range?
Craning my neck out the window, I saw that the abbey roof resembled a stone staircase, stepping to its ramparts. Wouldn’t that have encouraged invading hordes to scramble up, daggers clamped in their jaws?
Had Burnsby been a scholarly man, I might have inquired about the fortifications, stepped roof, and attacking warriors, but his invariable response to such questions is a blank stare.
In darker moments since my marriage to England’s most boring peer, I’ve come to the painful realization that if I wanted to chat with a vegetable, I should have propped up a gourd on my dressing table. I ward off gloom by reminding myself of Rosie’s dowry and all the exquisite garments we’ll order for her debut.
(I said I was blunt, but perhaps I should add shallow. I find that Parisian shoes, for example, make up for any number of hymns.)
As I stepped down from the carriage into the courtyard, Gothic windows gazed down on us like scornful eyes with peaked eyebrows.
Despite my jaunty letter to my sister, I found myself a little unnerved.
All three of Burnsby’s previous wives died in this abbey, after all.
Just as the second carriage—carrying our personal servants, crates of tea, marmalade, marzipan, and my piglet—rattled through the gates, the building’s wooden doors creaked open and household staff poured out, the women garbed in black dresses with snowy aprons, the men in rose livery.
After the abbey’s servants lined up, a few visibly shivering in the chilly air, my husband took my arm. “Good afternoon,” he shouted, sounding more energetic than usual. “I present to you my wife, Lady Burnsby.”
I inspected his blank expression, wondering if he felt déjà vu at announcing a fourth Lady Burnsby, before I fixed a smile on my face and nodded at the crowd. “I am grateful for your well wishes, and I shall enjoy meeting all of you.”
As they dashed back into the lodge, the butler stepped forward and bowed. “Good afternoon, your lordship, your ladyship.”
“This is Crumpsall,” my husband said, stripping off his furred gloves. “Father of my valet, as it happens.”
The man’s neck was so lean and long that his throat emerged triumphant from his cravat, topped by a chin as blunt as a hammer’s head.
“Good afternoon, Crumpsall,” I said, wondering if his hammer-like head indicated I was meeting the requisite villainous domestic servant, albeit not a housekeeper.
“I trust your journey was uneventful?”
“Indeed, it was, Crumpsall,” Burnsby said, handing over his gloves. “The snow held off, as did the highwaymen. Blasted nuisance, these outlaws. I planned to toss my wife’s piglet at their greedy heads if they showed themselves.”
Unfortunately, Burnsby had not taken to Peony. Who wouldn’t love a piggy who learned her name in two days and wags her tail for pure joy when offered a biscuit or a cuddle? I hold out hope that he may still succumb to her charms.
My maid, Tess, came forward, handing me Peony’s leash, which matched my pelisse. My piglet, after greeting me with a cheerful grunt, sat down and gazed around with interest. At only six weeks old, she is very intelligent.
Crumpsall wrinkled his nose, suggesting that he did not like pigs. I put him firmly in the villain category.
“May I present the lodge’s housekeeper, Miss Wellington?” he asked, ushering forward a lady some thirty years younger. Her hair was fire-red and her skin unlined: definitely not the terrifying housekeeper of fictional fame.
Miss Wellington curtsied. “Good morning, my lady. Should a groom create a pigpen in the stables, or will your pet reside in your chamber?”
“Peony would be happy with a box on the kitchen hearth,” I said. “She has a buttermilk bath every morning, if you please. This is my personal maid, Tess Hughes.”
“Good afternoon, Hughes,” the housekeeper replied, her dimples deepening. “Might I offer a refreshing cup of tea?”
As the two of them set off, accompanied by Burnsby’s valet, an elderly woman rushed out the abbey door and across the courtyard.
“Aren’t you adorable!” she cried, dropping a curtsy before me. She had faded blue eyes, a corona of white curls, and a red-and-white-striped gown with a rear bustle, a style outdated by some twenty years.
“It’s a pleasure to meet you,” I responded, curtsying in turn.
“Everyone addresses me as Aunt Mima, and I shall call you Genevieve, as you are now part of the family.” She grinned toothily at my husband. “Clifford.”
My husband’s name is Clifford Burnsby.
Clifford Clifton Burnsby, to be precise.
Burnsby leaned toward me and muttered, “Addled and born on the wrong side of the blanket.” He barely inclined his chin. “Good morning.”
Her birth explained why my husband hadn’t properly introduced me. Polite society insists that ladies should ignore the existence of bastards along with balls (the male kind).
I let my smile widen. “Thank you, Aunt Mima.”
“I do believe you are the most beautiful of Clifford’s wives.”
I wasn’t certain how to respond to that artless statement.
“Don’t you agree, Clifford?” Mima demanded.
“A most inappropriate observation,” he snapped.
Mima ignored that retort. “Who is this?” she asked, glancing down.
“Peony. She is six weeks old today.”
“Good afternoon, Peony,” the lady cooed, bending over for a closer look. “What a fetching leash. Are you fattening her for Christmas dinner?”
“No, she will never be anyone’s dinner,” I told her. “She is my pet.”
“A vulgar choice,” my husband remarked.
Vulgar is a potent word in polite society, a slur that can destroy a lady’s reputation. This rule comes to mind:
To carry children or dogs on a visit of ceremony is altogether vulgar. In the case of dogs, it is a thousand times better not to have them at all.
My response to his opinion? Another shrug.
Marriage has changed me. Or perhaps time has changed me, now I have reached the august age of twenty-five. Once the rules governing vulgarity are discarded, an astonishing number of choices present themselves.
To wit: If one may have a dog, why not a pig?
Perhaps there comes a time in every woman’s life when she discovers that propriety is poppycock. To put it vulgarly, propriety is bollocks.
Or perhaps that only happens to a woman foolish enough to marry a man older than her father.
A tall, scowling man emerged from the door to the abbey. Even from this distance, I could see that his coat and snowy cravat were exquisitely tailored. Perhaps that was Burnsby’s heir, Lancelot, scowling over his father’s marriage to a fortune hunter (a verdict I’ve come to anticipate from all and sundry).
My husband had neither this man’s jaw, his height, nor his air of command. The heir was not only more elegant but far more handsome than his father.
Mima waved. “Do come meet the new wife,” she shouted.
Not the most flattering of labels.
“There can be only one wife at a time,” she informed me, as if offering a novel piece of information.
“I am gratified to see that Sir Godric traveled from England to celebrate my birthday,” Burnsby said. So that wasn’t Lancelot, his heir.
“Godric didn’t come for your birthday, but to greet Lancelot’s new wife,” Mima countered. “Have you met her yet?”
“Of course I haven’t, since my only son chose to marry in Paris,” Burnsby said irritably. “Crumpsall, I trust that you will introduce my lady wife to the household.”
Without another word, my husband walked over to intercept his guest. After exchanging bows, Burnsby disappeared into the abbey without a backward look.
That was a surprise. Deserting one’s wife in a new location is extraordinarily impolite, and Burnsby prided himself on his gentlemanly manners. I suppressed a flash of annoyance, but his rudeness likely reflected his fastidiousness as regards illegitimate persons, even his own sister.
That didn’t reflect well on his character, but it was understandable.
Luckily, I was certain that my emotions didn’t show on my face. I am an expert at disguising unladylike emotions.
“This is my son, Godric,” Mima said, waving madly at the visitor. “Godric, this is the new Lady Burnsby.”
He bowed. “A pleasure to meet you, Lady Burnsby. My name is Sir Godric Everley. Aunt Mima, I’m not your son.”
Taken aback, I glanced between the two of them.
“Oopsie!” Mima said, slapping her cheeks with both hands. “You’re Lancelot’s school friend. I’d forget my head if it wasn’t hammered on.” She turned to me. “Back when the boys were at Eton, Godric used to spend holidays here. Now they’re not at school, he doesn’t visit.” She squinted at him, confused. “You’re not at Eton, are you, Godric?”
“No, I live in London. I am joining you this Christmas to meet Lance’s bride,” Godric said obligingly.
“I knew that! I mix the boys up, because they’re both so tall, manly, so—so . . . Fiddlesticks!” Mima flapped her hand around like a disgruntled bird. “Manly.”
Shoulders, chest, thick thighs shown to advantage in his breeches. A bold nose and jaw. Black, thick brows set in a straight line above black eyes. She was right: It all screamed manly.
“At any rate, Godric, isn’t Genevieve surprisingly wonderful?”
He eyed me up and down. Since his gaze conveyed undisguised contempt, my polite smile fell away.
“Surprising indeed,” Sir Godric echoed, looking as if he swallowed a gnat.
His disdain was nothing new. Neighbors of Burnsby’s country estate enjoyed making loud comments about my scheming, fortune-hunting ways. Since I had indeed married for money, I never bothered to point out that most women are forced to seek stability through marriage.
I gave Sir Godric a measured smile. “What a pleasure to meet you.”
Not.
He had a hard chin, hard eyes, hard cheekbones.
Then it occurred to me: The housekeeper had a dimple, and the anticipated ghosts had yet to appear, but the villain of the novel had duly presented himself!
Sir Godric had a wide, villainous brow, tumbling black hair, dark eyes, and that forbidding demeanor. Broad shoulders, the better to dig a grave. Hessian boots and a black coat, clearly tailored by Weston. Actually, that is a surprise. Weston is expensive, and villains are usually looking for money to pay the wages of sin. (Ha!)
Loathing him—compulsory for a villain—would be easy.
I made up my mind to drop “sir” when thinking of him. When a person has written you off as an exploitative sponge, it’s important to score small, albeit private, reprisals.
Crumpsall approached with an offer of tea, and we all set out for the door, Peony trotting at my heels. Halfway across the courtyard, Mima remarked out of the blue, “Godric was orphaned when his father choked to death eating stewed prunes, which, as you may know, is an infallible cure for syphilis.”
I missed a step. (Syphilis is a disease more offensive than balls and bastards, never mentioned in a lady’s presence.)
“It was Lord Burnsby’s father who choked on a pit,” Sir Godric said, not unkindly. “My father died in a carriage accident.”
Interesting. Burnsby had told me his father’s weak heart had failed.
“Such a dull way to go, Godric, if you’ll forgive my plain speaking.” Mima caught my elbow, bringing me to a halt as she peered at me blurrily. “How did your father die, dear? Who was he?”
“My father, Lord William Sutton, is alive and well,” I replied.
“Yet he allowed you to marry Burnsby?” Sir Godric asked incredulously.
I gave him a chilly stare. “I am not a minor. It was my decision.”
I would choose to marry Burnsby again. Probably. My life is not terrible. My husband and I are friends—or more precisely, friendly. I had made the choice to help my sister. My choice.
Rosie’s dowry and my new wardrobe have given me the fortitude to withstand bystanders’ ridicule and Burnsby’s disconcerting lack of interest in my opinion.
Still, I was feeling battered, so I bent down and scooped up Peony. As her warm body snuggled into the crook of my arm, she coquettishly fluttered her eyelashes at Godric.
“Are hogs fashionable these days?” he asked as we began walking toward the door again. His lip didn’t curl villainously, but the feeling hung in the air. A twirling-the-mustache type of condemnation.
“Absolutely,” I responded. “Every young lady—at least those in the ton—has a pig of her own. I gather you don’t move in the best circles.”
Mima jumped in. “Godric is treasured by royalty. Prince George himself bestowed his baronetage for services to the Crown.”
“No, Aunt Mima, I inherited the title from my father,” Sir Godric clarified.
I was starting to suspect that her memory loss was more serious than garden-variety forgetfulness.
Mima smiled toothily at me. “Godric is a shockingly bad-tempered barrister. I was horrified when I watched my son argue a case for the Crown a year ago.”
Unsurprising. Godric’s face resembled one of those stern marble angels adorning the front of cathedrals, the ones wielding swords. Not friendly. Judgmental.
“I’m not your son, Aunt Mima, and that was over a decade ago,” Godric said, accepting her assessment of his temper.
“He undoubtedly has a choleric liver but refuses to give up port,” Mima complained.
I paused at the door to the abbey. “You surprise me, Sir Godric. Even taking into account the evident benefit to mankind, you refuse to switch to brandy?”
“Unconscionable,” he said. I couldn’t spot even the faintest amusement in his eyes. Considering Burnsby’s lack of humor, I’ve grown to associate appreciation for irony with intelligence.
“Disappointing,” I remarked.
Did I say Sir Godric’s eyes were hard?
They hardened. No, I am not as sweet as my blush-colored cloak suggests.
Oh dear, a crushing look.
Or, in reality, another crushing look. He seemed to specialize in them.
(Consider me crushed.)
