Duke of Enveigh
Every rake has a method. His is working perfectly. On him.
Ten thousand pounds. One season. Seduce Lady Mercy Everard, ruin her before she is wed, and Archibald Orme, Duke of Enveigh, gets back everything he has lost: his fortune, his standing, and his revenge on the friend who married the woman he meant to. Fail, and he forfeits the one thing he owns that he would never sell.
He has never failed.
Mercy came home from twenty years in France with a secret worth hanging for and no patience for dukes. She sees through him on the first dance. She says so at the second meeting. And she walks into his bargain anyway, because he is the only man in England who can give her the one thing she wants, and he knows it. That is the plan.
What is not the plan is a ruined duke telling her the truth when he meant to lie. A hand on her back at a telescope that was supposed to be a move, and was not. A man who has practised this on a dozen women hearing his own lines and meaning every word for the first time.
The seduction is going exactly as designed. Only the wrong person is falling.