MY INCONVENIENT DUKE

In Victorian London, a young woman decides she must find a husband, only to fall in love with her brother’s best friend.

Lady Alice Ancaster is the younger sister of the Duke of Ripley, who, along with his friends Ashmont and Blackwood, is one of the young, brash, and wealthy dukes known in society as “Their Dis-Graces.” When the latest drunken antics of the Dis-Graces almost get her brother killed, Alice decides she has no choice but to secure a husband for herself. If her brother dies, she will fall into the clutches of his heir, the vile Lord Worbury. When Giles Bouverie Lyon, Duke of Blackwood, learns of Alice’s plan, he follows her to London, determined to protect her interests. When he was 17, Blackwood chose the desultory life of an entitled young aristocrat over a courtship with Alice, but now that he’s nearing 30, he is ready to settle down and make Alice his wife. Chase’s sparkling, witty banter is on fine display, but the plot is almost aggressively disjointed. Alice is courted by an older gentleman considering marriage for the first time; Worbury plots Ripley’s downfall, hoping to inherit the wealthy estate; Alice asks Blackwood to help her find a young street urchin who’s in trouble; and Alice and Blackwood learn that her brother is missing and search the countryside to find him. The real purpose of these disparate scenes is to show Blackwood in a new light, both to himself and to Alice. He is a mature and competent partner on their adventures, leading Alice to reconsider her opinion of him and agree to marriage. It’s effective until Blackwood decides to risk his marriage to save his friends—a timeline that was established in previous books in the series, but one that leaves this book feeling emotionally hollow.

Fidelity to the timeline of previous books weighs down a long-awaited romance.