The Earl's Inconvenient Ward

I knelt at a dying man's bedside and swore I would protect his daughter. I had never met her. I am Julian Blackwood, Earl of Ashworth, and a year later that promise arrives in a letter that nearly stops my heart. By order of the Court of Chancery, I am now sole guardian of Miss Charlotte Grey — eighteen years old, motherless, and entirely my responsibility until she marries or comes of age. I hold her annuity. I approve or refuse any suitor for her hand. She is, in every way the law allows, a prisoner. And I am a man with empty coffers, a crumbling estate, and a mother who reminds me in every letter that the sensible match — the necessary match — is the heiress Viola Markham, who is determined to become my countess. Charlotte Grey was never meant to be more than a duty. But she arrives clever as a whip and unafraid of me, a girl who only ever wanted to be allowed to read, and the house that was supposed to merely shelter her begins, somehow, to wake up around her. I tell myself I feel nothing. I write letters to her that I never send. Then a dance changes everything, and I am no longer pretending. I cannot have her. I am her guardian. I am promised elsewhere. The whole of society would call it the worst kind of scandal. And there is a poison in my past, and an heiress who will not be set aside, both circling the one truth I have hidden even from myself. "The cost of loving you," I told her, in the moment everything broke, "is more than either of us can afford." She deserves freedom, not a cage with my name on the lock. But regret is a splinter, and a promise made to a dying friend was never meant to cost me my own heart. If I want her, I will have to open the one door I swore I would keep shut — and risk everything I was raised to protect. The Earl's Inconvenient Ward is a tender, forbidden Regency romance about a guardian and his ward, an impossible promise, public humiliation, a rival heiress, buried secrets, and a love neither of them was supposed to feel. Perfect for readers who love guardian-ward romance, forbidden love, brooding wounded earls, spirited bookish heroines, slow-burn Regency longing, and historical romance with a hard-earned happy ending. A standalone Regency romance.