The Earl's Unwilling Heiress

She has the fortune. He has the title. Neither has any use for the other. Miss Frances Beverley is the Season's richest heiress and its least biddable. Her father's will leaves her two choices: marry by twenty-four, or surrender her estate to a cousin she has never liked. The Earl of Cardinham is richer in name than in acres, and in mourning for a woman he never married. He has no intention of trading his title for a fortune — until he discovers that an old family bequest ties his estate to hers, and neither can sever the knot without ruin. So they arrange a public engagement, to be dissolved quietly when the dust settles. It is a bad plan. It fails in snowy lanes, in tenant disputes, at a village fair, in the quiet of two grown people running the same household for a fortnight. When a court challenge forces Frances to choose between a marriage she never wanted and an estate she was born to run, Edward must offer her something neither of them planned for. An elegant Regency romance of enemies who become allies, and allies who become the truest thing either has had.