For nine hundred years, the Dukes of Oxford have served three masters: the crown, our title, and our estate, Belvedere.
Love? That’s not in the De Vere family playbook.
Passion? Reserved strictly for producing heirs.
We marry for duty, bed for bloodlines, and keep our desires locked away like the family silver.
As heir to the dukedom, I’ve perfected the art of noble restraint. My engagement to a beautiful, blue-blooded ice queen has been set in stone since birth. I’ve never questioned it—never even wanted to.
Until Ivy Cooper explodes into my grey, duty bound existence, flooding it with colour and chaos.
She’s everything I shouldn’t want: a potty-mouthed commoner who scoffs at my title and makes Eliza Doolittle look refined. She works at London’s most exclusive sex club, guards secrets darker than my family’s dungeons, and has zero respect for the duties that define me.
She’s also the most magnificent creature I’ve ever encountered.
One taste of her, and I’m completely undone. When I’m in her orbit, the repressed heir disappears, replaced by a lovesick fool who would burn down nine centuries of tradition for the chance of a future with her.
Now I’m facing an impossible choice: the title that’s been my destiny since birth, or the woman who’s become my salvation.
I’ve served my masters faithfully my entire life.
But Ivy Cooper makes me want to become a traitor.