title: The Lark and the Shadow
author: Allen, Kerry
description: The first volume in the Lark and Shadow series.
  Confectionery heiress Reese Hershey intends to leverage her wits, guile, and a shipment of cacao beans into a scheme that will provide for her retinue of miscreants, buy out her freeloading father, and restore her family's honor and fortune, but all her plans go to hell following a high seas encounter with a bloodsucking pirate.
  Fanged swashbuckler Malcolm Maximilian Marrs couldn't care less about the Lark's cargo — all he wants to plunder is her cunning, fiery captain. To an old monster suffering from ennui, a courtship that begins with a broken contract, a night in a brothel, and enough gunfire for a war promises to be worth every ounce of bittersweet trouble.