The Convenient Bride and the Beast (Wounds and Scandals #3)

"A scarred duke the whole county calls a beast, three motherless children he is desperate to keep, and a marriage of convenience offered to a woman with nowhere left to go."

Cecilia Wren has spent her whole life being useful, and it has never once been enough.

Turned out of her aunt’s house with a fortnight’s notice and nowhere to go, she has learned to expect nothing. So when a scarred stranger appears at her door with an impossible offer, she is in no position to refuse it.

Gideon Crane, the Duke of Aldenmere, has not let a soul look him full in the face since the fire. He knows what the world sees when it flinches from him, and he has stopped hoping for anything kinder.

But his brother is dead, and his brother’s three little girls are shut away in a cold attic by a grandmother who calls neglect discipline. No court will hand three children to a scarred recluse, though it might hand them to a married man with a respectable wife.

So he offers Cecilia a bargain: his name and his protection, and nothing more asked of her.

She asks him for nothing. That is exactly the trouble.

Because a woman who has never been cherished does not know what to do with a husband who notices when she has not eaten, and a man certain no one could bear the sight of him does not know what to do with a wife who looks at his ruined face and does not turn away.

As three frightened children come slowly back to life and a shuttered house warms around them, the marriage they both meant to keep at arm’s length becomes the one thing neither can afford to lose.

But the grandmother has not surrendered the children yet, and she will see them both ruined before she loosens her grip.

Book 3 of Wounds and Scandals. A clean, standalone Regency romance with a guaranteed happily-ever-after.

Perfect for readers who love brooding dukes, brave heroines, and clean, slow-burn romance with no cheating and no cliffhangers.