A Forged Bargain with the Duke

"She was warned about the Duke of Calder. She was warned by the man who forged his signature."

Theodora Loxton has run her father’s estate since she was nineteen, the rents, the roofs, the debts he prefers not to look at. In return he has spent six years telling the county she is difficult, ungovernable, and a trial to a patient man.

When the Duke of Calder offers to clear the family’s debt entire, her father signs the settlement before she is allowed to read it.

What he puts in front of her instead is a private paper in the Duke’s own hand: her letters to be opened and locked away, the household his to appoint, her every movement his to know.

She signs it, because her sister’s future is in the other document. And she walks into her wedding braced for a cage.

The cage never closes.

Her husband asks her opinion on the drainage of the low field. He gives her the far end of his library table. He asks permission before he so much as touches her hand. And every kindness only convinces her more completely that something worse is coming, because in Theodora’s experience it always is.

The paper she signed is a forgery. The Duke never wrote a word of it.

And the man who did is coming to stay.

A clean, slow-burn Regency romance of a marriage begun in a lie. Standalone, with a guaranteed happily-ever-after. Perfect for readers who love marriage of convenience, forced marriage, a capable heroine who stops apologizing for being right, and a duke worth trusting.

No cheating. No cliffhangers. Just a warm and deeply satisfying happily ever after.