Teaching the Marquess

Charlotte Beck is a mathematician with no fortune and no patience for men who count badly. She arrives at Wrenfield Court to teach the marquess's young ward, and within a week she has corrected the estate's ledgers and caught its steward selling coal to a French buyer. That is the easy part. The hard part is the household: the Marquess of Wrenfield, a widower with a duelling wound and a temper; his cousin the naval surgeon, ruined by a court-martial he did not deserve; and the secretary who runs the estate and keeps every secret in it. The three men share everything, and once upon a time they shared a woman. Charlotte will not be a replacement. She will be a partner, on paper, in bed, and in court when the steward names her a spy to save his own neck. She wins with arithmetic, and she walks out of the assizes with three rings and a settlement of her own writing.