The Duke's Hidden Runaway Bride
(2026)(A book in the Regency Runaway Brides series)
A novel by Catherine Bilson
Fleeing an oppressive marriage, Ophelia James has crossed England and half of Wales and arrived at last at a remote Welsh manor, begging her dead mother’s best friend to take her in. Hiding as Miss Olivia Jones, quiet goddaughter to a kind widow, she is safe; invisible, unremarkable, forgotten.
Then a blizzard delivers the one thing she cannot afford: a duke.
Adrian Heath-Sutton, sixth Duke of Calder, fled London to escape the relentless machinery of the marriage mart, exhausted by the calculating smiles, the title-hunters, and the weight of duty pressing down on his chest. His aunt's remote house in the Welsh mountains promised peace, brandy, and blessed anonymity.
Instead, he finds a household holding its breath, an aunt who has never lied to him lying to his face, and a young woman who watches him the way a hare watches the hounds. He is charming, idle, and possessed of an inconvenient talent for noticing everything. The more thoroughly she effaces herself, the more certain he becomes that there is a great deal there to efface… and the more dangerously curious he grows.
The snow has sealed the passes. No one is going anywhere. Can Ophelia keep her secret buried beneath a borrowed name? Or will the man trying so hard to earn her trust become the man who leads the hunters right back to her door?
Genre: Romance
Then a blizzard delivers the one thing she cannot afford: a duke.
Adrian Heath-Sutton, sixth Duke of Calder, fled London to escape the relentless machinery of the marriage mart, exhausted by the calculating smiles, the title-hunters, and the weight of duty pressing down on his chest. His aunt's remote house in the Welsh mountains promised peace, brandy, and blessed anonymity.
Instead, he finds a household holding its breath, an aunt who has never lied to him lying to his face, and a young woman who watches him the way a hare watches the hounds. He is charming, idle, and possessed of an inconvenient talent for noticing everything. The more thoroughly she effaces herself, the more certain he becomes that there is a great deal there to efface… and the more dangerously curious he grows.
The snow has sealed the passes. No one is going anywhere. Can Ophelia keep her secret buried beneath a borrowed name? Or will the man trying so hard to earn her trust become the man who leads the hunters right back to her door?
Genre: Romance