Folly with the Duke: A Regency Romance (The Ashford Chronicles Book 1) Kindle Edition

One moonlit escape. One ruined reputation. One marriage neither of them wanted.When Juliet Ashford slips away from her father's ball and into the old folly at the bottom of the garden, she's looking for five minutes of peace. What she finds is Lucas Ashbourne — the Duke of Ashbourne, her father's oldest friend, the most eligible man in England — hiding from the very same ballroom full of people trying to catch him.Their conversation in the dark is honest in a way neither of them is supposed to be. Then someone sees them. And by morning, there is only one acceptable outcome.Juliet expected to resent the Duke she was forced to marry. She did not expect Charlotte, his six-year-old daughter, fierce and watchful and desperately in need of someone who actually sees her. She did not expect to find herself building something real in the shadow of a convenient arrangement, or to discover that the family she stumbled into might be the one she was always meant to have.But then a man from Lucas's past arrives with evidence that could destroy everything — and Juliet realises she knows almost nothing about the husband she has begun to love. The marriage that started as scandal is about to become something far more dangerous.Folly with the Duke is a marriage-of-convenience Regency romance featuring a sharp-tongued heroine who didn't want a duke, a grieving widower who didn't know what he needed, a small girl with very strong opinions about her new stepmother, and a blackmail plot that threatens to unravel all of it. Perfect for readers who love found family, slow-burn emotional depth, and heroines who earn their happy endings. Read more