The Counterfeit Duchess
Aila is a baker's daughter. She kneads dough, counts coins, and keeps her little sister fed. That is the whole of her world—until the night she is dragged from her bed, stuffed into a dead woman's corset, and told to smile.
The Duchess of Ashworth is gone. No one will say how. No one will say why. All Aila knows is this: she looks enough like the Duchess to fool a blind man, and the Duke is coming home from the war. Blind. Furious. And expecting his wife.
The housekeeper's terms are simple. Play the Duchess, share his bed, keep him fooled—or her twelve-year-old sister dies.
But Bastien Vourenne is not the kind of man you fool easily. He lost his sight to alchemical fire. He did not lose his mind. He can hear a lie in a heartbeat. He can smell fear on bare skin. And the woman in his bed does not move, breathe, or taste like the wife he left behind.
He should call for the executioner. Impersonating a noblewoman is a death sentence, no exceptions, no appeals.
He locks the doors instead.
What neither of them knows is that someone in the household murdered the real Duchess. The proof is hidden in the cellar. The killer walks the halls freely. And Aila just became the only loose thread standing between a murderer and a perfect crime.
She cannot run. She cannot confess. And she is falling for a man who will never forgive the lie.
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