The scandal of the century meets the penance of a lifetime.
He swore a vow of silence to bury his sins. She was the one woman who made him break it.
Derrick Eastleigh was never meant to be a duke. Once the most notorious libertine in London, he spent a decade in a Welsh monastery, desperately praying away the shadows of a misspent youth. He traded his playing cards for the Bible, determined to scrub his soul clean. But when an unexpected inheritance drags him to a crumbling castle on the Hampshire coast, he finds his exile shattered.
Eleanor has spent years guarding the Tresvant estate with nothing but her wits and an iron will. When the new Duke—a man with a reputation as long as her arm—arrives, she expects a tyrant with roving hands. Instead, she finds a man caught between the heaven he craves and the hell he believes he deserves.
Pulled from the quiet coast into the viper’s nest of London’s high society, Derrick and Eleanor are forced into an alliance that quickly devolves into an ungodly attachment. As they navigate a treacherous Season of royal judgment and political scandal, the past Derrick tried to bury begins to surface.
With his hard-won convictions drowning under the weight of his undeniable desire, Derrick must choose: continue his penance, or claim the only woman who ever saw the man beneath the monk.
Some sins are too seductive to renounce.
Tropes:
- Libertine to Monk
- Forced Proximity
- Redemption Romance
- Grumpy & Resilient
- High-Stakes Political Intrigue
