July 1819
A most shocking bit of news has reached This Author’s ears regarding none other than the Duke of Ashmore’s sister. Yes, you have read right: Lady Arabella, this season’s Incomparable. They say, gentle reader, that Lady Arabella has mysteriously disappeared from the aforementioned duke’s residence on the evening of June 14 and not been seen since. It has come to This Author’s attention that the duke has sent out bowstreet runners to look for her. The Duke of Ashmore, who is as high in the instep as no other, with a name yet untouched by scandal and gossip, is said to be quite beside himself with worry.
Has she been kidnapped?
Has she run away?
Or has she – oh horror – eloped to Gretna Green?
The ton is abuzz with rumours. One cannot help but wonder how, and in what manner, our Incomparable has finally, and sadly, come to fall.
But oh, let it be known, Curious Reader, that This Author has it on the best of authority that a lady of the same stature, regal bearing and complexion as Lady Arabella has been espied boarding the stagecoach not to Gretna Green, but to Cornwall! Upon inquiring where she was heading, she replied she was answering a position as a governess—with a family of bourgeois origins.
A duke’s daughter as a governess?
This Author finds this so inconceivable that she has concluded this particular rumour to be a vicious falsehood, indeed. It cannot be true.
Or can it?
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About the Book
Arabella and the Reluctant Duke by Sofi Laporte
A runaway duke’s daughter. A handsome blacksmith. A festering secret.
Their lives were built on lies……until they unravelled.
Being a duke’s daughter is not all it’s cracked up to be. Surely there must be more to life than embroidery, balls, and finding a husband?
Running away to work as a governess, Lady Arabella does not count on being hired by a precocious 14-year-old girl who runs the family…. or being swept away by her dashingly handsome father.
Mr Philip Merivale, inventor, blacksmith and widowed father of three lively children, is not amused. Clearly, the beautiful new governess who answered his daughter’s advertisement must be a lady. There is one thing he hates more than anything: the aristocracy.
But challenging the lady who has snuck into his life has unexpected consequences: Philip finds himself falling for a woman whose true identity represents all he claims to despise.
When spats turn to sparks, Arabella discovers that Philip harbours a devastating secret of his own… one that threatens to jeopardise everything.
Arabella and the Reluctant Duke is a standalone and Book 2 of The Wishing Well Series. This is a sweet traditional Regency with simmering romance, mischievous, witty banter, and heart-throbbing happily ever after.
Available on Amazon: https://amzn.to/32xRAa1
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About the Author
Sofi was born in Vienna, grew up in Seoul, studied Comparative Literature in Maryland, U.S.A., and lived in Quito with her Ecuadorian husband. She has worked as a journalist, university lecturer, foreign language teacher and librarian. Sofi likes coffee, owls, ruins and books. When not writing – she is always reading – she likes to travel and scramble about the countryside exploring medieval castle ruins, which she blogs about on her website. She currently lives with her husband, 3 trilingual children, a sassy cat and a cheeky dog in Europe.
Visit her website here: https://www.sofilaporte.com
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