When Miss Penelope Rothwell, eldest daughter of a genteel but debt-drowning family, accepts a marriage proposal from William Ashcroft, Duke of Aldermere — a man universally regarded as cold, proud, and utterly impenetrable — she expects nothing more than an exchange of names on a register and a life of quiet, separate dignity. What she does not expect is a library that holds the secrets of his grief, a household full of loyal servants who watch her with barely concealed hope, or a man whose legendary coldness thaws, degree by tortured degree, beneath the warmth she cannot help but radiate.
It is a practical arrangement. Two sensible people with complementary needs — she brings connections and respectability to an estate shadowed by old scandal; he brings the financial rescue her family so desperately requires. Penelope intends to be a duchess in name only, maintaining her independence, her opinions, and her dignity with unfailing good humour. William intends to be left in peace.
Neither intends to fall in love.
It is witty. It is warm. And it is, in the end, absolutely devastating in the best possible way.
