Prince's Impossible Queen

Four years ago, Prince Stellan of Ruthermont broke Ailsa Dorrity's heart and sent her away without an explanation.Now the brilliant electrical engineer has been summoned back to the kingdom she swore never to enter again.Ruthermont's new clocks, telegraphs, railway signals, palace locks, and military communications have been joined into one magnificent network. But the clocks no longer keep the same time. Palace mechanisms listen to private conversations. Trains change direction without human orders. And hidden beneath the capital, something is waiting to take control.When an assassination attempt places Ailsa at the center of a royal scandal, Stellan announces that they are secretly engaged. The deception grants her access to the palace's restricted machinery—but it also forces them to recreate the intimacy they once shared.Their attraction has survived.Ailsa's trust has not.As stolen designs and coded messages reveal a conspiracy decades in the making, four extraordinary inventors arrive with the final pieces of the puzzle. Together, their creations form the Canticle Engine: a system capable of controlling every connected machine—and every human body fitted with a mechanical regulator.Lord Eustace Kendrew intends to use it to seize Ruthermont without declaring war.Palace gates will lock. Telegraphs will carry false commands. Railway signals will turn escape routes into traps. Ministers will collapse beneath invisible orders. And Stellan will be offered a crown that can survive only through obedience.To save the kingdom, Ailsa must dismantle a machine built from the stolen genius of five women. To win her back, Stellan must do more than promise to love her. He must surrender the power that made loving him impossible.Because Ailsa will never become the ornament of an unchanged monarchy.But she might become the queen who transforms it.The Prince's Impossible Queen is the fifth and final novel in The Clockwork Brides, a Victorian historical-romance series filled with brilliant women, dangerous inventions, hidden identities, political conspiracy, second chances, and open-door passion.