The Duke's Ledger

The Duke of Wharton married a merchant's daughter for her arithmetic. He said so aloud, at the wedding breakfast, in front of her family. Eleanor Craddock has spent her life making numbers confess. Within one season she finds the confession that matters: six thousand acres of her husband's land were stolen with a forged deed, and the thief is family. The man holding the deed offers her a bargain. She can have the debt cancelled. The price is her marriage. She says no. He takes the fight to Parliament instead. Now Eleanor must stand in a room no woman has ever been permitted to address, and read her husband's ruin aloud — unless the truth can be made to return what was taken.