The Baron's Reluctant Ward: A Regency Romance of Hidden Secrets, Enduring Trust, and Unexpected Love: 1

Some inheritances come with more than money attached. When Elswyth Hawthorne buries her father, she expects grief. She does not expect to learn that his final act was binding her, for one full year, to the guardianship of the one man her family taught her to despise. Baron Alaric Ravenshollow wants no part of it either. Percival Hawthorne spent a decade dragging his name through scandal and courtrooms, and he has no wish to open his home, let alone his heart, to the daughter of a man he was raised to distrust. But an old promise, sealed by his own father and never meant to be broken, leaves him no honorable way to refuse. Neither of them chose this arrangement. Neither of them expects it to matter, in a house that guards more secrets than either family ever admitted. As Elswyth begins to question everything she was told about her father's ruin, she finds a man who bears no resemblance to the villain of her childhood, and a truth buried deep enough that someone is willing to kill to keep it that way. The closer she and Alaric come to uncovering it, the harder it becomes to remember why they were ever meant to be enemies at all. Duty brought them together. Danger is testing whether they'll survive to choose each other freely. For readers who love a slow-burn Regency romance built on old secrets, quiet courage, and a love neither character saw coming, The Baron's Reluctant Ward is a story about the promises we inherit, and the ones we choose to keep.