Married to the Duke By Midnight (Ruin and Rapture #1)

Prologue

The letter arrived on a Tuesday.

Even though Jo had been waiting for it, she still felt the prickle of nerves down her arms when her housekeeper handed it to her. Jo sent the housekeeper a trembling smile and waited until she had left the small parlor with a view of the sea, before tearing the letter open with trembling hands.

She skimmed the greetings in the beginning and the places where Mr. Oakley, her best friend Beatrice’s husband and Jo’s solicitor, explained how he had done everything he could.

“But I regret to inform you that, despite my best efforts, I have not been able to find any legal reasons to change the clauses in your father’s will. Either your cousin or your future husband must manage your money.”

Jo’s gaze swept over the little cozy room she had built for herself as she tried to take in the words.

The reading nook where she was sitting faced the sea.

She had placed a lounge chair in front of the fireplace, where she liked to plan the next day in the evening, and her desk faced the garden window.

It was where she would go over the account books and make her lists.

If her cousin Ambrose seized possession of the house, he would sell it. He had already threatened to do it. Jo felt her breath quicken at the thought. This was supposed to be her sanctuary. The place where she could be completely herself.

She had liked living with her uncle, and his departure from this earth had filled her with sorrow, but the little cottage by the sea that she had named Seaglass Cottage had proven the perfect place to recuperate.

To grieve and to find her footing after having cared for her uncle the last two years of his life when he had been bedridden.

Ambrose was not to take it from her. He was not.

Jo’s eyes filled with hot, angry tears. Her lips trembled as she took several soothing breaths.

She rose to look at the sea. It had always calmed her.

She had lived with her parents at the seaside, but Uncle Horace had lived further inland and due to his bad leg, they had rarely gone.

He did not like the long journey, nor was he able to walk on the sand.

Jo had always dreamed of returning and now she had.

The waves rolled softly toward the beach beneath her. Over and over. Jo followed the repetitive motion until she was ready to continue reading.

“Your cousin, Mr. Hawkins, demands that all your assets be handed into his possession in two weeks.”

Two weeks! All of this could be gone in just a fortnight.

The life she had carefully built and already treasured would be gone.

She held no illusions that Ambrose would not sell the cottage.

Even though her inheritance was not his to use as he saw fit, he would still have the power to buy and sell assets.

And Seaglass Cottage would be seen as such.

No one would even fault him for it. Probably applaud him for investing in something much more sensible for his feebleminded female cousin.

Jo wrung her hands as she stared at the sea.

Not even the waves below her could calm her now though.

Ambrose had more than once hinted at where women like her belonged: women who were too analytical, too insensible, yet overly prone to tears.

At three and twenty, Jo was of age and he would not be her guardian, but if he was able to convince a doctor that she was suffering from some illness of the mind…

Resolutely Jo threw the letter on the high-backed chair in the reading corner. The one that had belonged to her uncle. She sat down at the desk and snatched her pen from the silver holder.

“Please secure a special license for me to marry as fast as possible,” she wrote to Mr. Oakley. “I will arrive in London to find a husband as soon as possible.”

Of two evils, right now a husband seemed like the lesser one.