"Merrill deftly delivers a well-crafted, potent and passionate" Victorian romance in her RWA Golden Heart Award–winning debut novel ( Romantic Times). Dear Cici and Father, I have come to Devon and married a duke. And I'm more tired and hungry than I have ever been in my life. Please let me come home. Compromised and wedded on the same day, Lady Miranda was fast finding married life not to her taste. A decaying manor and a secretive husband were hardly the stuff of girlish dreams. Yet every time she looked at dark, brooding Marcus Radwell, Duke of Haughleigh, she felt inexplicably compelled—and determined—to make their marriage real!