Why Do Dukes Fall
In Love?
Dukes Behaving Badly #2
By: Megan Frampton
Released: July 26th, 2016
Avon Romance
In Megan Frampton’s captivating new Dukes
Behaving Badly novel, we learn the answer to the question:
Why do dukes fall in love?
Michael, the Duke of Hadlow, has the liberty of enjoying an indiscretion .
. . or several. But when it comes time for him to take a proper bride, he
ultimately realizes he wants only one woman: Edwina Cheltam. He’d hired her as
his secretary, only to quickly discover she was sensuous and intelligent.
They embark on a passionate affair, and when she breaks it off, he accepts
her decision as the logical one . . . but only at first. Then he decides to
pursue her.
Michael is brilliant, single-minded, and utterly indifferent to being the
talk of the ton. It’s even said his only true friend is his dog. Edwina had
begged him to marry someone appropriate–—someone aristocratic . . . someone
high-born . . . someone else. But the only thing more persuasive than a duke
intent on seduction is one who has fallen irrevocably in love.
Edwina Cheltam and her daughter Gertrude were left in dire
circumstances after her husband died and his useless younger brother was
irresponsible with the money, despite the fact that she made the money, running
his businesses for him; but because she was female, he took her responsibility
away from her as soon as she made it a success. But now with no other choice,
she is left to find employment, and she finds that with Michael, Duke of
Hadlow.
Michael, Duke of Hadlow was a driven man, he wanted to be the best
person he could be, the best Duke, the
best representative in the House of Lords, the best at everything he put his
extremely logical mind to. So it was the most logical more to hire the most
logical person for his position as his secretary, and that person is Edwina
Cheltam, even if it means that she brings her child with her, it’s a logical
move after all. But Hadlow had underestimated the attraction between them,
until he finally gives in and asks her for a kiss.
Everything seemed perfect between them; professional during the day and
passionate at night, that is until Edwina's irresponsible brother in law rears
his ugly head and takes Gertrude from the house when they are visiting
factories. Once they collect Gertrude and bring her home; Hadlow gives Edwina a
logical way to protect both her and her daughter from Cheltam again…Marry him!
but when Edwina turns him down, Hadlow is astounded, but Edwina couldn't say
yes, when he didn't give her the three words she need to hear, she decides to
leave, but can Hadlow figure it out before he loses everything he cherishes?
I have never read any of the books in the Dukes Behaving Badly series,
but that is soon to be rectified as I seriously couldn't put this book down!
The authors writing and plot had me so enthralled in this story, that I
couldn't bear to put the book down! I needed to know what happened, I will have
to say that my only disappointment is that Mr. Cheltam didn't end up in debtors
prison (yes I know I'm awful ;-) ). I loved that both Edwina and Hadlow are
super logical people, which made the story smooth and streamlined, which made
it a really nice to read a unfussy historical Romance.
I love both Edwina and Michael's characters, with their logical
approach during the day and their steamy, sex talk in the bedroom. I loved the
way that Michael's character respected Edwina's position, thoughts and
decisions. They really are a perfect fit for each other and Gertrude just
completes the little family perfectly. I will say that I absolutely loved Miss
Clark and I'm hoping that we meet her character again, and maybe she can find
her happily ever after too!
I give Why Do Dukes Fall In Love 5 stars!
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1844
The
Quality Employment Agency, London
“He left you with
nothing?”
Edwina glanced to the side of the room, a
tactic she knew full well wouldn’t disguise the moisture in her eyes,
especially not from Carolyn, her oldest and dearest friend. They’d met when Edwina’s
late husband had wanted to find a respectable, but inexpensive, maidservant,
and Carolyn’s agency had found the perfect person. And Edwina had finally found
a friend she could actually talk to.
The room was as familiar to her as her own
lodgings—and definitely more welcoming. A kettle was heating up water on the
small stove, the tea things—the chipped blue cup for Carolyn, the cup with the
handle that was always too hot for her—waiting until the water boiled.
Cozy, comfortable, and everything else she
was not.
“No.” She spoke plainly, unable and
unwilling to disguise the truth of it.
Eight years of marriage to one of the most
boring men of her acquaintance, and he didn’t even have the decency to leave
her financially comfortable when he died.
“I can help you, you know,” Carolyn said
in a soft voice. She got up as the kettle began to whistle and started
preparing the tea.
Edwina’s throat tightened. “I won’t take
your money.” Fine words for a pauper—they both knew that if the choice came
between accepting charity and letting her daughter starve, Edwina would take
the money. Gertrude sat on the floor, playing with her dolls. Was she already
getting thinner? Edwina’s heart hurt at the thought, and she had to bite the
inside of her cheek not to start fretting aloud. That would do nothing but
worry her daughter, who wasn’t old enough to understand.
Edwina wasn’t entirely certain she was old
enough to understand, either.
“I wasn’t offering to give you any money,”
Carolyn replied in a dry tone of voice, glancing over her shoulder as she
spoke.
Edwina’s gaze met Carolyn’s.
“Well, what then?” she asked in an
unsteady voice.
“Employment,” Carolyn replied, returning
to her task.
“Employment?” Edwina echoed, an uneasy feeling
settling somewhere in her gut. The gut that was remarkably close to her
stomach, which hadn’t eaten today, and had only had some porridge and some hard
cheese yesterday.
So the uneasy feeling would have to ease.
“You do know I run an employment agency.” Carolyn
gestured to the room they sat in. “Since you have used my services.”
“Yes, back when I could afford them,”
Edwina replied in a tone that was both wry and pained.
She took a deep breath, and looked around
her. It was undeniably pleasant, if modest. The cozy, comfortable room of the
Quality Employment Agency, filled with books, papers, mismatched chairs, and an
enormous battered desk, where Carolyn normally sat, welcomed her, made her feel
safe in a way her new lodgings did not.
“Yes, but—” and then Edwina felt both
foolish and snobby, since the answer was obvious, and yet had not occurred to
her because of who she was. Who she had been.
“But what?” Carolyn picked up the teacups,
wincing as she felt the heat from the offending handle. She brought them over
to where Edwina was seated, placing them on the desk and sitting back down in her
usual spot. “You need a job, Edwina. No matter who you are. Even
ladies—especially ladies, judging from my experience—need to have enough money
to eat and to live. Even if their husbands were so disappointing as to leave
them bereft of anything but their good name.”
“And even that was sullied, thanks to
George’s entrusting of the accounts to his brother as soon as it seemed the
businesses were getting profitable, and worthy of notice,” Edwina remarked in a
bitter tone. She kept her tone low, so her daughter couldn’t hear. “I told him
I could handle them, that I had gotten them to the state they were in, not to
mention I told him how untrustworthy his brother was—and yet he said he’d never
‘let a female deal with important things,’ ” she said in an imitation of her
late husband.
“More fool he,” Carolyn remarked. “If he
had allowed you to continue to oversee the finances you wouldn’t be in this
situation now, would you?”
It was a well-worn discussion, but one
that still made Edwina angry. George had been so blind to her attributes he
hadn’t seen she was skilled at maths, far better than anyone in his own family,
especially his debt-beleaguered younger brother. He had been fine when she
oversaw the accounts when they weren’t important—but ironically, as soon as her
skill had yielded results, he took them away from her and handed them to a man.
Simply because he was a man, and his brother, and not a woman, and his wife.
And now she and little Gertrude were being
made to suffer for it. George’s brother hadn’t done more than shrug when Edwina
had told him how George had left her. He already had a wife, he said, and he
couldn’t afford to take her in, although he had offered a place to his niece.
But Edwina couldn’t bear the thought of
being separated from her daughter; she was the only thing keeping Edwina from
stepping in front of an oxcart one day. That she and Gertrude might starve to
death was not something she wanted to contemplate—what reasonable person
would?—even though she had to.
Which brought her back to why she was
currently sitting with her closest friend in said closest friend’s employment
agency, realizing that perhaps she had to consider employment herself.
“What can I do?” she said at last, hating
how pathetic and needy she sounded. Better
pathetic and needy than dead, a
voice said inside her head.
Carolyn chuckled, taking a sip of her tea.
“What can’t you do? You can balance accounts, drive hard bargains with
tradesmen, oversee skittish maids, sort out the temperamental discord among
upper-class servants, and keep an older husband relatively comfortable in
illness. Not to mention you are extremely well-read—there are benefits to
having a neglectful husband—and your parents ensured you had all the education
you’d need to be an adept wife, whether you married a politician, a solicitor,
or even a lord.”
“Or a businessman with lofty pretensions,”
Edwina added. “They thought they had taken care of me. I wish they were still
here.” She shook her head. “I do not wish to be married again, if that is the
employment you are suggesting.” Once was enough, and she would have said never
would have been enough if it weren’t for Gertrude. And it is not as though she
had any other family to resort to; her parents had both been only children, and
she had no relatives that she knew of.
“I am not in a husband acquisition
business, Edwina,” Carolyn replied in a mocking tone. “If
I were, don’t you think I could afford a
better office?”
They both glanced around at the tidy but shabby
room. “Excellent point,” Edwina replied with a grin, picking up the cup with
the still-hot handle and taking a welcome sip of tea. “So what do you have in
mind?”
Megan Frampton
writes historical romance under her own name and romantic women’s fiction as
Megan Caldwell. She likes the color black, gin, dark-haired British men, and
huge earrings, not in that order. She lives in Brooklyn, New York, with her
husband and son.
