The Notorious Duke’s Governess by Martha Barwood
“No one had stayed for Mel Grace since she was sixteen years old, and the most scandalous duke in England was the last man on earth she expected to ask her to.”
Mel is a governess of twenty-six, practical, observant, with no family and no fortune and one quiet certainty no one knows she carries: that hoping for more than she has is the surest way to be disappointed. Her father walked out of her life when she was a girl, and she has not allowed herself to wait for anyone since.
So when Hartfell House in remote Cornwall offers her a generous salary to teach three wild little girls no one else can manage, she takes it expecting nothing. A roof. A wage. Three difficult children she can probably handle. The same arrangement she has had in four other houses.
What she finds is something else.
Annabelle, Viola, and Thistle are six years old, brilliant, and being raised on three days of attention a month from a mysterious benefactor named Mr. Langford. Within a week, Mel has earned their trust. Within a month, she has worked out the truth their benefactor has spent five years hiding. These are not his nieces. They are his daughters. And Mr. Langford is not a quiet country gentleman at all. He is Rhys, Duke of Trevane, London’s most notorious rake, who has spent fifteen years building a fortress of scandal around himself because the truth is too painful to carry alone.
He expected her to leave the moment she discovered it. He did not expect her to stay.
Rhys has never met a woman who looked at him without seeing the title, the fortune, or the scandal sheets. Mel sees a tired father trying to be better than he was raised to be, and she tells him so, plainly, the way she tells everyone everything. And slowly, evening by evening in a study lit by a single fire, the rake and the governess discover that being seen by one honest person is more terrifying, and more healing, than either of them is prepared for.
But society does not let men like Rhys keep secrets forever. And when the truth about his three little girls is finally dragged into the light, Mel will have to decide whether the woman who has spent ten years not waiting for anyone is brave enough, at last, to stay.
A deeply emotional Regency romance about loneliness, healing, found family, and the courage to believe in love again when life has taught you not to hope for it.
Filled with tender moments, slow-burning passion, and a brooding duke no one truly understands, this heartfelt story will stay with you long after the final page.
No cheating, no cliffhangers, and a beautifully satisfying happily ever after.
