Some Dukes Have All the Luck

Ash Hawkins, Duke of Buckley, no more wants to marry than he wants a stick in his eye. As the owner of a gaming hell, he is all too aware the odds of a happy marriage are against him. But raising his three rebellious wards alone is proving more than he can handle. He needs to find someone who stands to benefit from a marriage of convenience as much as he does. Someone logical, clinical, and rational. And in a stroke of luck, he quite literally stumbles over just such a woman. After years of ridicule for being more interested in bugs than boys, Bronwyn has accepted that she’ll never marry for love. Her parents, however, are threatening to find her a husband. Bronwyn doesn’t need any scientific research to show her Ash has secrets. But his proposal would give her the freedom to continue her entomology research and perhaps finally get published. Just as long as she can keep her mind on her work and off his piercing eyes, broad shoulders, and wicked, wicked tongue.
Miss Bronwyn Pickering is odd and awkward, and a constant disappointment to her social climbing parents. When she fails to find a titled husband one too many times, they decide to banish her from the Isle of Synne, the island home she has grown to love, until she can do her duty to their family. Desperate to remain with her friends and her work studying the insects of Synne, she accepts the proposal from the first man to ask her: a wickedly magnetic gambling hell owner who wants nothing more than a marriage of convenience. It's ideal, really: she can complete her research while looking after his young wards, and he can return to his business in London. But she soon learns her fiancé is in fact a duke, and what should have been a simple, inconsequential marriage has now become much more complicated.Ash Hawkins, Duke of Buckley, has spent half a lifetime distancing himself from his father's legacy, all while drowning under an ocean of guilt that he failed to save his mother and the rest of the people his father hurt. That guilt is doubled when he unexpectedly becomes guardian to three young girls. He decides that a wife will be just the thing to provide his wards with the family they so desperately need. When Miss Pickering stumbles into his path like a petite, bespectacled gift, he makes her an offer on the spot, and is relieved when she accepts. They can marry and quickly go their separate ways. But soon she is infiltrating every part of his life, and he begins to think that perhaps he might finally be worthy of love.