This HaBO comes from Danni, who wants to find this book for her friend:

I’m searching for a book on behalf of my friend who has been desperately hunting for this book for years but hasn’t been able to turn up anything with regular google searches. I tried looking for them too, but I wasn’t able to find anything either. A couple got close, but nothing quite right.

They read this book around 2006, the title potentially has the word kitten in it but I wasn’t able to turn anything up with that when I was looking myself. May have been a regency, or at least set in that sort of setting. Might be called romance, might be an erotica. The cover had a woman in a red dress wearing a black cat masquerade mask. My friend also drew out what they can r

The plot points they can remember are:

– The heroine is described as a mousy unattractive wallflower

– She puts on a black kitten mask and goes to a masquerade party but
accidentally seduces the wrong man (she had been tying to seduce a man
who had insulted her before I think?)

– The hero has a dead wife, and his dead wife was having an affair with
another guy (possibly the guy who heroine was trying to seduce?)

– The hero is convinced that this other guy murdered his wife and is trying
to prove it (the murder is a central plot point throughout the book)

– The main characters sleep together in a stable at one point

– In the end it turns out that the wife was killed by the maid who was
possibly a lesbian

I feel like I can picture this cover, but I can’t recall the title.