The Heiress Gets a Duke

Before I started writing romance, I consumed a few hundred romance novels a year. Harper St. George was one of the first authors I ever put on auto-buy after I had stumbled across her debut Viking romance and promptly fell in love with her voice. For those reasons I was delighted when Book of the Month asked whether I would tell their readers about The Heiress Gets a Duke.

The novel is set during America’s Gilded Age, when so-called dollar princesses flocked from the States to London every season in the hope of marrying a titled man. August Crenshaw is one such heiress, but she is a free spirit keen on a role in her father’s business empire rather than acquiring a ring on her finger. Only when her unwilling sister is put on the line does she put herself forward. But perhaps marrying the Duke of Rothschild, who happens to be the very opposite of a fusty aristocrat, isn’t the sacrifice she first thinks it is…

Harper has a way with words that never fails to capture me. I was hooked on this book from the rather harrowing opening lines and was carried along by the effortlessly flowing prose until I found myself turning the last page with a huge smile on my face. Both August and Rothschild are compelling characters, individually as well as a couple, and Harper negotiated the potential pitfalls of their semi-arranged marriage brilliantly. The sparks between August and her duke were red-hot from the moment she first sees him in a boxing ring. A duke who boxes—yes please, sign me up!

American heiress August Crenshaw has aspirations. But unlike her peers, it isn't some stuffy British Lord she wants wrapped around her finger—it's Crenshaw Iron Works, the family business. When it's clear that August's outrageously progressive ways render her unsuitible for a respectable match, her parents offer up her younger sister to the highest entitled bidder instead. This simply will not do. August refuses to leave her sister to the mercy of a loveless marriage.

Evan Sterling, the Duke of Rothschild, has no intention of walking away from the marriage. He's recently inherited the title only to find his coffers empty, and with countless lives depending on him, he can't walk away from the fortune a Crenshaw heiress would bring him. But after meeting her fiery sister, he realizes Violet isn't the heiress he wants. He wants August, and he always gets what he wants.

But August won't go peacefully to her fate. She decides to show Rothschild that she's no typical London wallflower. Little does she realize that every stunt she pulls to make him call off the wedding only makes him like her even more.