The Runaway Duchess
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3.9 • 12 Ratings
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- $8.99
Publisher Description
A runaway bride dumps a duke and rewrites her own love story in this enchanting Victorian historical romance from the author of The Duke Undone.
Pretty and pampered, Lavinia Yardley always dreamed of becoming a duchess. But family disgrace forces her into marriage with the most vile duke in England, and she finds herself desperate for a way out. When a rustic stranger mistakes her for globe-trotting botanist Muriel Pendrake at a train station, Lavinia has a split second to decide whether to submit to her fate or steal someone else's.
Neal Traymayne spent his youth traveling the world as Varnham Nursery's most daring plant hunter. Now he runs the nursery and is ready to settle down with a like-minded wife who'll fit right in with his large, happy, down-to-earth family. His correspondence with Muriel Pendrake proved they're the perfect match. Odd that the woman in the flesh seems more like a society belle than a scientist.
As they tramp the Cornish moors together, Lavinia and Neal discover a wild and rare desire. But this blossoming love is rooted in lies, and when the real Muriel Pendrake shows up, they can't hide from who they are. The truth may wither their hopes of happiness, or it may bloom into the sweetest love of all.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Lowell delivers the goods in her deliciously complex Victorian-era sequel to The Duke Undone. Lavinia Yardley has little choice but to marry the much older Duke of Cranbrook, despite thinking of him as a "nasty old goat," to salvage her family's depleted coffers and loss of status following her broken first engagement and her father's imprisonment for theft. Traveling by train to the duke's estate and her new home in Cornwall, she meets Neal Traymayne, head of Varnham Nurseries, who mistakes her for Muriel Pendrake, a worldly and widowed botanist he was meant to escort from the station. Desperate to escape her new husband, Lavinia goes along with his mistake, embracing the beauty of Cornwall and the companionship of Neal's family as she starts to fall for Neal. But can their budding romance survive when Neal learns the truth of her identity? Lowell's finely wrought characters don't have it easy when it comes to navigating restrictive Victorian society, but even their most outrageous actions ring true. Readers will be swept away by this entrancing, intelligent romance.
