Welcome back for Sunday Snippet and part 4 from No Duke of Mine. I hope you’ve enjoyed the snippets I’ve shared so far. It’s just a few more days till wide release, but more to come today. Enjoy!

The last time he���d been summoned like this, the dragon had insisted he make haste to marry. He fully intended to if he could ever leave the estate.

He found Aunt Violet in the morning room, tea, a London newspaper, a pile of fresh correspondence at her elbow, and his butler waiting to do her bidding.

She squinted at Algernon. ���About time, boy.���

���You wanted to see me, Aunt?���

���Yes,��� she said, and then glanced at the butler pointedly.

She did not tell him to leave, but it was clear she wished to have a private word without the butler listening in. ���Seymour, would you be so kind as to have the coachman walk the horses again? I will be there as soon as I can, and we can be on our way.���

When he was gone, he glanced at his aunt with a brow raised. ���We���re alone now.���

She gulped. ���I have a favor to ask of you.���

���Beyond giving our butler an assistant of his own?���

���I should like you to dismiss him from your service,��� she announced. ���Dismiss Seymour today, before you leave.���

Algernon gaped. ���I cannot dismiss him. Seymour is essential to the running of the estate, especially when I am away. I thought you liked him.���

She huffed. ���Oh, I do. Just not as a servant.���

Algernon stared at her in confusion. Her expression seemed vexed, and then he noticed her cheeks turning red. Embarrassment? The suspicions about his aunt and butler suddenly had her request making a strange sort of sense. ���You like my butler, but not as a butler.���

Her eyes flashed with an emotion he���d never seen there before. Fear.

You can catch up with last week’s snippet here and come back for more of No Duke of Mine next Sunday.

Scandalous Brides, Book 5

Algernon Sweet, Duke of Ravenswood, has a plan. Travel to London. Propose to the rich titled widow who can solve all his financial woes. Easy. Or it would be if he weren���t trapped at a country inn by rising floodwaters where he encounters a childhood friend who once read poetry to his dog and questioned him about everything under the sun. Margaret Black turned grown-up is a distraction, even more a bluestocking, and inconveniently attractive, too. When it becomes clear she needs help to reach her father, he offers a seat in his carriage���purely out of politeness, of course. And not at all because she makes him laugh like no woman ever has.

Maggie Black has never quite belonged���not in drawing rooms, not in London, and certainly not stranded at an inn with a duke. Trading stories about their very different lives and discussing books over bad stew and too much brandy late at night isn���t a good idea for a spinster traveling without a chaperone. But it���s hard to resist a man who���s both familiar and frustratingly handsome���especially when he hangs on her every word as if she were the only woman in the world. Somewhere between road delays, accidental confessions, and a scandalously intimate stop in a bookshop, Maggie finds herself falling for the one man who absolutely cannot be hers. Because dukes don���t marry poor bluestockings with a passion for books and a tendency to argue. Do they?

Available 7 October, 2025

Add to Goodreads

The post Sunday Snippet: No Duke of Mine #4 appeared first on Heather Boyd.