The Lady's Proposal

The Lady's Proposal is a historical romance by the American writer Patricia Waddell, published in 2001.

Lady Clarissa Pomeroy is practical, strong-willed and in possession of an inheritance that her grandfather has made conditional on her marrying. She approaches Simon Sinclair, the Earl of Sheridan, with a proposal: that they marry and have a family, on terms she has thought through in advance. Simon agrees, though the question that troubles him is why he was chosen, and the answer is that Clarissa has been in love with him for some time and has worked out that he is the sort of man who will not interfere with the rest of her life, which includes a refuge for women who have nowhere else to go. The book follows the marriage as the secrets both of them are keeping come into view, and it is one of a group of romances the author set in the same period.

Waddell wrote a number of romances in these years, and this one belongs to the group of them set in the same London society.