Free (Kindle) The Desirable Duchess by M. C. Beaton [Regency Romance]

[ATDrake]

The Desirable Duchess by bestselling mystery & romance author M. C. Beaton aka Marion Chesney (SYKM, Wikipedia) is the retroactive 1st in her Dukes and Desires series grouping of f/m Regency historical romances with upper class social rivalry and inheritance games themes, this installment starring a newlywed young woman who thought she was in love with someone else, as her marriage grows colder even as true passions inflame, landing in an awkward predicament in an era that didn't really have much in the way of couples' counseling, free courtesy of publisher RosettaBooks, who are e-printing it from its 1993 Fawcett edition out under the Marion Chesney name.

This is RosettaBooks' daily Valentine's Day giveaway promotion for February 13th.

Currently free, just for one day @ Amazon (available to Canadians and many other places around the world when I spot-check, but apparently not in the UK, where publisher Carver still holds the rights; but hopefully disappointed UK Beaton fans will enjoy the mystery short which does happen to be officially free for them)

Description
Lovely Alice Lacey was a true Incomparable, and her marriage to the Duke of Ferrant was the event of the Season. But almost none realized, however, that Alice was secretly in love with someone else - or that she had confided her feelings to a clever talking mynah bird who determined to announce these intimacies at the moment of the couple's wedding!

Now the gossip mongers were relentless. Alice's marriage had started out and remained cold and impersonal, and her new husband was already rumored to be taken with another woman.

Before she even realized what was happening, Alice found herself in world of opposites: she found out that the man she had thought she loved was something other than what he seemed, and the man she had married was something far more than she'd hoped. Her last hope and redemption had to be convincing the man she had wed that they were in love.