Historical Romance Books with the Word “Duchess” in the Title

Any Duchess Will Do by Tessa Dare (2013)

Book 4 of the Spindle Cove series. A duke is basically kidnapped by his mother and taken to Spinster cove to find a wife. He picks out the most unsuitable lady in the place, who is the barmaid. Griffin and Pauline strike up a bargain where he’ll pay for her time while she makes sure to be the most unsuitable duchess candidate that she can. They have competing goals since he just wants to be sad and wallow in some personal tragedy (that we do find out about in the book) and then she wants to save enough money to open a bookshop. But of course with all this time spent together, they do eventually fall in love, with the support of his mother, who just really really wants to be a grandmother.

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The Duchess Deal by Tessa Dare (2017)

Book 1 of the Girl Meets Duke series. If you’re looking for an easy-to-read, super funny, historical romance, this is the one for you. We start with a seamstress barging into a duke’s home wearing his ex-fiancee’s ugly ass wedding dress and demanding payment for it because his ex-fiancee didn’t. And then this duke decides to propose to the woman! He needs a wife and heir, and since his last fiancee left him after he was all scarred from the war, and this new girl seems to need the money, it’s win-win. She accepts with several conditions, including saying she’ll bring her cat. (She doesn’t actually have a cat and just finds one on the street that day) Of course they’ll need to stay together in London til she gets pregnant, and then she’s going to be shipped off to his country estate to raise the kiddo. Both our main characters have past hurts in their lives, but they work through them and open up to each other. And there’s just so much humor in this story. Tessa Dare is just so great at bringing levity into her stories.

Ebook borrowed from my local library via Libby.

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The Duchess Hunt by Lorraine Heath (2021)

A duke tasks his secretary with finding him a wife after his first attempt was unsuccessful. From the very first page, I knew I was in for an angsty ride. I especially loved the longstanding quiet companionship between these two. And the fact that all the important people in the duke’s life knew how essential Penny was to him.

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Always Be My Duchess by Amalie Howard (2022)

Book 1 of the Taming of the Dukes series. High stakes meet-cute when running from footpads, Lysander and Neve have an instant connection. He hires her to pretend to his escort for an evening (which then turns into the rest of the season). He’s cold and doesn’t show emotion well, prioritizing business over relationships. Neve is just trying to survive and care for her injured sister, without sacrificing her integrity. The level of angst and longing and realizations of love in this book are really good in this book.

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The Day of the Duchess by Sarah MacLean (2017)

Book 3 of the Scandal and Scoundrel series. We meet this couple at the start of book 1, where the duke is visibly cheating on his wife at a garden party, setting off the events in that book. This book is told in a non-chronological timeline, showing how these two ended up married in the first place, and the current status of their relationship. At some point, Sera has left her husband and left the country, not to be found, and she has returned after two years to ask for a divorce. Malcolm, meanwhile has been spending that time chasing after her and looking for her and is very hesitant to give into her request. He finally does relent on the condition that she help him find a replacement wife. With the chapters from the previous timeline, we see how these two meet, fall in love, and end up in an entrapped and loveless marriage. Even though Malcolm seemed villainous before we even started this book, we start to see a bit of how things turned out the way they did. It’s definitely a twisty angsty story here that packs an emotional punch.

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A Duchess a Day by Charis Michaels (2020)

This book was delightful and my favorite of the series. We start with the Snow White’s Huntsman being recruited from prison to keep guard over a duke’s flight-risk of a fiancee. (He was imprisoned for murdering the Snow White-equivalent of the story, but she really just ditched him.) When he meets his new charge, he finds her sunshine-y and addictive and the girl clearly has no interest in the duke at all. She manages to recruit the huntsman into her plan of throwing eligible ladies (seven in all) at the duke. Relatively low on the steam scale, but you can really feel the longing and pining between our two main characters.

Ebook borrowed from my local library via Libby.

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A Duchess by Midnight by Charis Michaels (2022)

The stepsister of Princess Cindy has her chance to atone for her mean girl ways in this book, where she is now a mentor to young debutantes. Working with a reclusive duke’s nieces, she tries to teach them the rules of propriety. And when she gets caught in a compromising situation (oops), she has to uphold those rules and marry the duke. This book is the steamiest of the set, with the compromising happening within the first half of the book and a little action outdoors in the woods. *fans self*

Advance ebook provided by Avon Books via NetGalley. Print book provided by Avon Books.

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The Portrait of a Duchess by Scarlett Peckham (2023)

Historical romance. Regency-era England. Book 2 of the Society of Sirens series. Cornelia is the niece of a duke but has built her reputation as a scandalous painter. She and her friends are trying to raise funds to build an institute for women and she needs a place to exhibit her latest collection of paintings. One seemingly random day, her uncle’s heir, Rafe, and now the duke comes to visit to inform her of her inheritance, which hinges on her being married. The surprise is that she’s already married to Rafe himself, and he suggests they go public with the marriage so she can claim her inheritance. What follows is a non-chronological story of how these two ended up married twenty years ago and then estranged in all the time since then. I mostly kept reading because I wanted to find out what happened, but the story itself wasn’t terribly interesting to me. Rafe is a smooshy sort of fellow who falls in love too freely and scares off all his partners with his enthusiasm and Cornelia is adamant about her independence and does not want the complication (or obligation) of love. He’s an overzealous puppy for most of the book and she’s the reluctant and selfish one, protecting her own isolation. And then there’s the political stuff happening in the background that wasn’t super interesting to me. On the plus side, Rafe is unapologetically bisexual here and one of his male lovers joins in for an encounter with Cornelia. So you know, if you like that stuff, here it is in a traditionally published historical romance.

Advance ebook provided by Avon Books via NetGalley.

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The Unclaimed Duchess by Jenna Petersen (2010)

Book 2 of the Billingham Bastards series. Anne and Rhys have been betrothed since children and even though he is super serious and cold, she is totally in love with him and willing to be the perfect duchess. After the events of the previous book, Rhys finds out a scandalous family secret that makes him question pretty much everything about himself. And since he’s being blackmailed with the information, he decides to keep his new wife at a distance. She’s having none of it though and chases after him and tries to get him to stay with her. Lots of drama and scandal here and very fun to read.

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Duchess by Day, Mistress by Night by Stacy Reid (2017)

Book 1 of the Rebellious Desires series. We have a widowed duchess asking questions about a missing maid from her household and she’s put in touch with a man who is known for solving these sorts of issues. Of course they’re also attracted to each other so they start an affair while they’re at it. It all needs to be kept pretty quiet since she needs to stay a respectable lady of society and he has such a terrible reputation.

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The Courtesan Duchess by Joanna Shupe (2015)

Book 1 of the Wicked Deceptions series. This one starts with an arranged marriage where the groom is drunk and has no idea who he’s just married… he leaves her pretty much immediately and resumes his debaucherous lifestyle. Several years later, the duchess wants to solidify her claim to the money and land of the estate and decides she needs to be pregnant with the duke’s heir to do so. She comes up with a plan to seduce her own husband to get herself pregnant, without him knowing who she is. Super interesting plot here with both people keeping secrets and basically being slightly shady.

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The Duchess Takes a Husband by Harper St. George (2023)

Historical romance. Victorian-era England. Book 4 of the Gilded Age Heiresses series. We revisit the woman from our tragic prologue of Book 1, Camille, an American heiress who was married off to a much older duke. Throughout the first three books, we’ve seen bits of the cruel treatment she has endured from her husband, ultimately seeing his death in the bed of his mistress at a house party. Now a widow for the past two years, Camille is slowly trying to reclaim her identity and participating in causes her husband would have disapproved of, like the home for young women or the women’s suffrage movement. She also seeks to determine if she can find sex pleasurable and propositions a man to assist her. Jacob is the illegitimate son of an earl and half-brother to Christian from Book 2. He refuses Camille’s proposition at first, not wanting to make things awkward as their social circles overlap. He ends up needing a fake fiancee to prove his stability for a business arrangement and asks Camille to play the part; of course she only agrees in exchange for the sex lessons she wanted in the first place. We soon realize that Camille has underlying fears of the act due to the ill treatment from her husband and Jacob needs to be gentle and patient as well as allow Camille to be in control of their intimacies. We get to see our charming rakish hero slowly fall in love with Camille and help in her journey towards empowerment. Overall, this was a great way to conclude the series and see our poor Camille finally get a happy ending.

Ebook borrowed from my local library via Libby.

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The Ice Duchess by Tracy Sumner (2020)

Prequel novella to the Duchess Society series. We have a childhood friends-to-lovers second chance romance with this book. Our very own Ice Countess, Georgiana, does not want to marry again after she was forced into a cruel and loveless marriage to save her father’s finances. She meets her childhood crush Dex again while he’s back from his geological expeditions. He had left her many years ago before any romance could properly blossom. Now that Dex is back and promised his dying father he would wed, he realizes that he is in love with Georgiana and must convince her of his suit. I enjoyed this quick novella and love the set up for future books in the Duchess Society.

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