M C Beaton

The Desirable Duchess Lib/E M C Beaton

Lovely Alice Lacey was a true incomparable, and her marriage to the Duke of Ferrant was the event of the season. Almost no one realized, however, that Alice was secretly in love with someone else--or that she had confided her feelings to a clever talking mynah bird who announces these intimacies at the moment of the couple's wedding.

Now the gossip mongers are relentless. Alice's marriage started out, and has remained, cold and impersonal, and her new husband is already rumored to be taken with another woman.

Before she even realizes what is happening, Alice finds herself in a world of opposites: the man she thought she loved is something other than he seems; and the man she married, something far more than she hoped. Her last hope and redemption has to be convincing the man she wedded that they are in love.