She stumbled into the wrong room — and straight into the arms of the man her family had every reason to despise.
When penniless Arabella Winters flees an unwanted suitor’s advances through the darkened corridors of Ashford Manor, she slips through the nearest door and finds herself face-to-face with Alexander Blackwood — the Duke of Thornwick, heir to the title that destroyed her father and swallowed her childhood whole. She should hate him. She does hate him. Except the man standing before her in the firelight is nothing like the monster she built from grief and memory.
Stranded in scandal’s shadow with her reputation hanging by a thread, Arabella accepts a devil’s bargain: a week of false courtship. Alexander plays the besotted duke to shield her from a predatory fortune hunter and silence his mother’s relentless matchmaking. Arabella plays the willing object of his attention. Nobody falls in love. Nobody gets hurt.
Except plans made in desperation rarely survive proximity to desire.
With every stolen moment in moonlit gardens, every waltz that lasts a breath too long, every confession traded in the dark where society cannot hear — the line between performance and truth dissolves. Alexander carries guilt like a second inheritance. Arabella carries wounds that never fully closed. And between them crackles something neither of them bargained for: a connection so honest it terrifies them both.
If you love swoony, slow-burn Victorian romance where the wounds run deep, the tension crackles on every page, and the happy ending is earned — Her Duke in the Dark’s Secret Desires is the book you’ve been waiting for.
Scroll up and grab your copy today. Some bargains change everything.
