DUKE WITH BENEFITS
by Manda Collins
Love is a riddle that even a genius can’t solve alone.
Most noblewomen would be delighted to find themselves accidentally betrothed to a duke. Not Lady Daphne Forsyth. She’s decidedly different from the people around her, no matter how many rules of human behavior she observes and decodes. She’d rather focus on the Cameron Cipher, a legendary puzzle she inherited as part of an unexpected bequest from Lady Celeste Beauchamp, a champion of women's rights who left her house to Daphne and three other bluestockings. But her benefactress’s nephew, Dalton Beauchamp, Duke of Maitland, continues to distract her. Despite Daphne's clear preference for mathematics, Dalton can’t stop thinking about her, and her blunt honesty only serves to intensify their connection. After an unexpected death in the house, their dangerous hunt to solve the cipher keeps both from noticing what their friends can see: they’re in love. Daphne’s love of her freedom, however, may be stronger. In the second entry in her Studies in Scandal series, Collins (Ready Set Rogue, 2017) expands the world of Beauchamp House, and the friendship between the four heiresses provides a charming backdrop to the story. Daphne’s intelligence and inability to comprehend social interactions are thoughtfully drawn, and it’s a delight to see a classic Regency hero so smitten with a truly unusual heroine. Driven by multiple passionate scenes and the hunt for a murderer, it’s a swift and intense read.
A bluestocking Regency romance of unusual intensity.