A Duke by Mistake
When reclusive Oxford scholar Benjamin Hartford receives word that his distant uncle has died, he expects little more than a formal notice. He certainly doesn't expect to inherit the Dukedom of Ashford-a title he never wanted, attached to an estate drowning in debt and a legacy of aristocratic pride.
Desperate to avoid ruin, his mother arranges a marriage of convenience with Arabella Winters, a merchant's widow whose forty thousand pounds could save Hartford Hall. She needs a title to silence society's whispers about her trade-born fortune. He needs her capital to prevent creditors from seizing his ancestral home.
What begins as a coldly practical arrangement in the shadowed halls of a decaying Victorian manor transforms through shared purpose: deciphering his uncle's cryptic Greek cipher hidden in the library walls, defending tenant families from fever and hunger on the windswept Surrey heath, and facing London society's venomous judgment together. As intellectual sparring gives way to quiet understanding, Benjamin discovers that the greatest inheritance was never the dukedom-but the woman who taught him that true nobility lies not in blood, but in character.
A Duke by Mistake is a slow-burn Victorian romance celebrating partnership over passion, where two wounded souls learn that love is not a fever to be endured, but a foundation to be built-one honest conversation at a time.
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