Kay Hudson

Lady Elizabeth Upton is on a mission of charity, hoping to find a home for the widow and child of a soldier killed in the Peninsular War, when a series of accidents leads her into a very compromising situation involving a tub of bath water and the Duke of Aldridge.

As the daughter of a marquess, she has a position in society to uphold; she can’t laugh away such an embarrassing incident. But she has no intention of being forced into a loveless marriage, either, even if she did once have a girlhood crush on Philip Ponsby long before he became a duke.

Aldridge, just returned from several years abroad, has vague ideas of providing his family with an heir, but this isn’t quite what he had planned. However, Elizabeth would make a suitable wife, and she is the sister of his oldest friend. Maybe this isn’t such a bad idea after all.

So begins one of Cheryl Bolen’s favorite story lines, the marriage of convenience. Both Elizabeth and Philip have their duties to family and society to meet, and an agreeable marriage, if not a love match, seems the best way to handle the problem.

But what happens when these two people begin to fall in love, each convinced that the other does not feel the same? What happens when the young officer who once courted Elizabeth but left without offering for her hand returns from the war, and when Aldridge’s one-time Italian mistress shows up in London?

Duchess By Mistake is populated with likable supporting characters, a couple of budding secondary romances, and interesting historical background, as Elizabeth campaigns for war widows and orphans while Aldridge takes his newly-claimed seat in the House of Lords (and his less public work at the Foreign Office) to heart.

This book is the second in the House of Haverstock series, a follow-up to Bolen’s Lady By Chance (the story of Elizabeth’s brother Charles and his wife), but it can easily be read as a stand-alone novel. If you enjoy emotional but non-graphic Regency romance, you will want to read Duchess By Mistake.