It's entirely possible I would have enjoyed this more if I had read the previous books in the series, but as it was I found it kind of meh. The climactic scene at the end read as unrealistic wish-fulfillment (

Spoiler

would anyone really have taken the word of maids seriously? really? even if a duke pointed out that they were telling the truth? I guess this is why the Bad Guy was set up as a huge moralizer, but frankly even that degree of hypocrisy, historically speaking, would not have been an insurmountable obstacle

), and the Big Revelation after that was just bewilderingly pointless - there was no foreshadowing of that at all. I tend to expect more from Hunter's novels than this.