WHEN THE DUKE WAS WICKED, by Lorraine Heath

1/series. For over a score of books, award-winning Lorraine Heath has created engaging, very human lords and ladies whose lives, despite their privilege and status, are lacking...true love. Consistently, these marvelous tales of the late Victorian era will entangle you from the first page. When the Duke Was Wicked is no exception. Henry Sidney Stanford, seventh Duke of Lovingdon, died. Not literally, but when his beloved wife and daughter perished of typhus, a disease he knew in his heart he'd brought home. Lovingdon becomes a recluse, a rake, a debauched gambler. Two years into his spree, a young girl he'd long known re-appears in his life. All grown up...and then some...
Lady Grace Mabry has gone from gawky to graceful, and asks Lovingdon to assist her in determining which of her many eager suitors would make a loving husband. He, of course, despises them all; they're after her fortune, they're debauched (and who should know better?), they're bankrupt. None will suit. Lovingdon, repressing his attraction for the risk-taking, cigar-smoking, gambling young temptress, finally agrees to tutor Grace in what to look for in a prospective husband. But Grace has a secret she can only share with the man she will marry. And she wants it to be Lovingdon. This is a book you may have to read in one delicious sitting. A 5. The sex is a 2+, all appropriate (and not absurd or abusive, which you can easily find in some other romance novels).
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