The Christmas Marquess

She came to catch a marquess. She didn't expect to lose her heart to his butler.

Bertha Collingwood has exactly nine days to secure a proposal from the Marquess of Hadlow — a marriage of convenience her mother has practically gift-wrapped, complete with a special license and a fortune large enough to rescue a crumbling earldom. Simple enough, surely. Except that within moments of arriving at the frost-bitten splendour of Hadlow Hall, Bertha commits the unforgivable: she announces, loudly, in front of every assembled guest, that the marquess is terrifyingly old.

With her reputation already in tatters and the clock ticking toward Christmas Eve, Bertha resolves to salvage the situation — and finds herself confiding her every scheme to the one person who seems to actually listen: the hall's suspiciously charming, suspiciously unbutler-like butler. He winks. He laughs at all the right moments. He knows far too much about the estate for a man newly pressed into service. And every conversation with him makes Bertha forget entirely why she came. The class divide is absolute, her mother's ambitions are relentless, and something about Braddon is not adding up — but Bertha has never been particularly good at following the rules.

Can Bertha untangle mistaken identities and misplaced affections before Christmas Eve arrives and she finds herself married to entirely the wrong man — or worse, in love with one she can never have?

Perfect for fans of witty Regency romance, fish-out-of-water heroines, and slow-burn secrets hiding in plain sight.