Book #2

Book #1 Despite The Duke. Helen has spent her life invisible. As a lady's companion to the spoiled daughter of a marquess, she exists in the margins of polite society-neither servant nor equal, wanted by no one and belonging nowhere. She asks for nothing more than to survive one final Season, collect her promised wages, and disappear into a quiet life of her own choosing. But when the notorious Duke of Roxboro appears in a darkened alcove at a ball, Helen's carefully ordered world begins to unravel. Fletcher Bean grew up in The Devil's Acre; a place he'll do anything to escape. Resembling a duke, even Roxboro, is profitable. Bracelets, necklaces, earbobs, stickpins...they all find their way into Fletcher's pocket. No one ever questions him or rather, Roxboro, until he meets a sharp-tongued, perceptive lady's companion and chaperone. The attraction between them is immediate, passionate and doomed from the start. Miss Cosgrove believes Fletcher to be only an unrepentant libertine. A sot. A debauched duke. But the truth is far worse.