The Hidden Duke's Heart (Dukes of Deception #3)

"He turned the whole world from his door.

She was the one person who would not stop knocking."

Thomas, the Duke of Aldermere, is held to be the coldest man in three counties.

He has turned off half his household, closed his door to every caller, and let the village frighten its children with his name.

He governs his estate, and his grief, with the same unbending control, certain that the safest life is the one that lets no one close enough to be lost.

Jane Rennet has never in her life met a silence she could leave alone.

A baker’s daughter with quick hands and a quicker tongue, Jane arrives at Aldermere Hall to deliver an order and very nearly burns down the kitchen instead.

She expects to be dismissed and forgotten.

She does not expect the cold master himself to cross the room and pull a burning shawl from her shoulders with his bare hands, and look at her scalded palm as though it grieves him.

The man the county calls heartless is not heartless at all. He is a man who once spoke a cruel word to a brother he loved, and lost him before it could be unsaid, and has been paying for it in silence ever since.

Jane sees it before he says a word of it. And the more she fills his cold house with warmth and noise and honest talk, the more Thomas is forced to confront a truth he has spent years refusing:

the walls that keep out grief keep out everything else as well.

But a cousin who profits from the Duke’s solitude is watching the house with great interest, and a duke does not marry a baker’s daughter without a great deal of the world deciding to have its say.

A clean Regency romance of grief, quiet courage, and the slow, patient work of opening a guarded heart.

Perfect for readers who love Regency romances with cold, wounded heroes, warm-hearted heroines, and a slow burn worth the wait, The Hidden Duke’s Heart is sure to enchant.

No cheating. No cliffhangers. Just a beautiful happily ever after.