Miss Wick and the Duke Dilemma

by Violet Marsh

Genres: Women's Fiction; Regency Romance

Synopsis

The daughter of a pirate and a newly titled duke must team up to solve a decades-old family mystery in this clever historical rom com—perfect for fans of Evie Dunmore and Manda Collins!

Eoin Aucourte, the newly minted Duke of Foxglen, always played by his grandfather's rules. But now that the old man is dead, Eoin’s first decision is to track down his long-lost mother. The only problem? He’ll have to visit the infamous Black Sheep Coffeehouse to begin his search. Rumor has it that the owner, Miss Hannah Wick, knows all the gossip from the dingiest St. Giles alleyways to the glittering ballrooms of Mayfair. But the whip-smart daughter of a pirate also has a way of making Eoin forget all the lessons on propriety that his grandfather ruthlessly instilled in him.

The Duke of Foxglen represents everything Hannah disdains about the nobility. Even worse, his grandfather exiled her papa from England, setting her father on the course of piracy and endangering her entire family. Seeing an opportunity to seek vengeance on his family, Hannah pretends to “help” the shy, surprisingly handsome duke—but soon realizes Eoin may be the first truly honorable noble she’s ever met.
With every clue they uncover, their search intensifies… and so does their attraction. But with so many secrets between them, does love even stand a chance?
​

Release date: March 17, 2026

Publisher: Grand Central Publishing

Print pages: 368

Sample

London, Late 1750s

Inside was nothing but ashes.

Eoin Aucourte, the newly minted Duke of Foxglen at the age of only twenty-two, stared unblinkingly at the contents of the ornate box, the very container that had tempted him for more than a decade. It had always rested on the desk of Eoin’s paternal grandfather, the late duke. When the old man had called Eoin into his office to upbraid him, Eoin had stared at the relief of silver serpents twisting and turning on the metal exterior.

Slowly, Eoin pivoted in the direction of his Uncle Hugh. Guffaws racked the forty-six-year-old man’s body with such intensity that he barely managed to nudge Eoin’s Uncle Francis, who was sitting next to Hugh for the solicitor’s reading of the late duke’s last missive. Although the peer had only died in the wee hours of the morning, his surviving children—Eoin’s two aunts and two uncles—had insisted that they gather in the dining room with Eoin and the solicitor to learn what they would inherit.

“Do you see that, Francis?” Uncle Hugh asked as he clumsily batted at his younger sibling’s arm.

Uncle Francis was laughing too. “I did. Nothing but char.”

“All the times our nephew danced to our father’s tune—just to get soot in the end.” Uncle Hugh snickered.

Under the dining room table, Eoin’s fists were clenched, but otherwise he displayed no emotion. Just as he’d been taught. Because his grandfather had promised that if Eoin transformed himself into the perfect heir, then he’d give him the mementoes of Eoin’s mother locked away in the silver case.

“I don’t even know why John wants to find that woman anyway. After all, she did abandon him at the tender age of six.” Aunt Joan used the English version of Eoin’s name rather than pronouncing it as “Owen.” The late duke had insisted that no one use the Irish one that Eoin’s working-class mother had chosen at his birth.

Although Eoin didn’t bother to correct how Aunt Joan addressed him, he wouldn’t allow her other falsehood to stand. Not anymore. Not with the former Foxglen dead and the precious clues to his family’s whereabouts destroyed. “Mama and my older sister didn’t leave me of their own free will. You know that the law dictated that your father—my grandfather—had the right to be my guardian.”

“Why wouldn’t the statutes favor my papa?” Aunt Joan tilted her delicately shaped chin in the direction of the solicitor. At forty-two, she was a strikingly handsome woman with golden hair and cornflower-blue eyes that matched her brothers’. “Should John’s mother, a poor widow of a dead traitor, have been entrusted with raising a future duke? The laws of primogeniture prevented my father from disinheriting John despite John’s regrettable maternal line, but at least Father had the right to raise John as he saw fit after my eldest brother died.”

Frustrated rage burned in Eoin’s gut, but he did not allow it to show on his face. He’d heard these accusations for the past sixteen years.

Before the solicitor could opine upon Aunt Joan’s rather rhetorical question, a moan came from her sister Eliza. The forty-year-old was the youngest of the Aucourte siblings and, as far as Eoin knew, had always possessed the weakest disposition. Her hair and skin were both a shade paler than her more robust sister’s, and she looked like an ethereal fairy queen.

“I cannot tolerate hearing about our late brother’s death.” Aunt Eliza’s voice was so soft that Eoin wouldn’t have understood her if he wasn’t adept at reading lips—a skill his grandfather had thought would make Eoin an excellent choice for a courtier to the king.

“Eh? What did you say?” Uncle Hugh asked in his booming voice. He and his brother looked like graying princelings with their blond waves threaded with silver. Their behavior, though, had always been boorish.

“Eliza said she didn’t want to listen to tales about our dead brother,” Aunt Joan snapped. “And neither do I. I am here to learn what Father left me. We already know that the entailed portions of the estate are unfortunately John’s. But what am I to receive?”

Eoin noticed that the left side of the otherwise sober solicitor’s mouth twitched. Upward. A glint of amusement?

Eoin stared closely at the staid man, whom he knew well. As part of his training to become the next duke, Eoin had accompanied his grandfather since the age of nine on most of the peer’s business dealings. His task had been to silently observe without showing any inattention. Eoin understood the character of Foxglen’s cronies better than his own personality. And the attorney, Mr. Lewis, was not prone to amusement. Ever.

At first glance, Mr. Lewis looked like a jolly sort with neatly trimmed white whiskers and perennially pink cheeks. Yet closer inspection revealed his true character. Even though his hazel eyes were bright, it was more with shrewdness than kindness. And he never smiled but always remained calm and self-possessed.

Except for today.

Now, instead of sitting perfectly straight, Mr. Lewis leaned forward as if in anticipation. Normally when the lawyer reviewed documents, he kept them flat on the table. Currently, though, he gripped the pieces of parchment tightly enough that they crinkled at the edges. And… was that sound of a tapping foot emanating from Mr. Lewis rather than one of Eoin’s aunts or uncles?

“Shall we resume?” Mr. Lewis asked as he glanced around the room, and Eoin wondered what he saw—probably a hulking young man with dark hair surrounded by his golden bevy of relatives. With his giant frame, Eoin had never fit in with his paternal family and their finely hewn features, a fact he was never allowed to forget.

“Yes. Get on with reading the letter.” Uncle Hugh waggled his fingers in the solicitor’s direction.

The man’s mouth quirked northward once more, but his voice betrayed no emotion as he intoned the words penned by the late duke. “‘I am sure that my surviving offspring are eagerly awaiting news of my bequest to them. They are, unfortunately, spoiled beyond redemption. I am afraid I should have not left their raising to their nursemaids, governesses, and tutors. Children, I have learned, require a firm hand, so I did not repeat my mistake with Viscount Malbarry.’”

Of course, his grandfather would refer to Eoin by his courtesy title. Because that’s all Eoin ever was, an heir for molding into a perfect duke.

“Must we listen to the chidings?” Uncle Francis asked. “We had enough of that when Father was alive.”

“Most definitely.” Aunt Joan heaved out a sigh. “I much preferred his benign neglect in our formative years. He became much too invested in our lives after our eldest brother died in an otherwise forgettable uprising to overthrow King George. Father even forced us all to live with him if we wanted any luxuries in life instead of giving us an income, as was our due.”

“Well, we are finally going to receive what we deserve,” Uncle Hugh said impatiently. “That is, if you would all stop interjecting and allow the solicitor to continue reading.”

Without ceremony, Mr. Lewis began anew. “‘As both my sons drink like fish, I have arranged these flasks for them…’”

Mr. Lewis paused and rang a small bell. Immediately, the pocket door to the dining room pulled back, and two of Mr. Lewis’s clerks scurried in. Both were holding flasks shaped like small, angry sturgeons.

“‘As neither of my sons has developed any ability to handle their liquor with dignity, these containers are filled with naught but water. Drink up, my sons. This toast is on me,’” Mr. Lewis continued reciting.

The words were unnecessarily cruel but not entirely fiction. Both men had been ejected from polite society shortly before the death of Eoin’s father. Perhaps Hugh and Francis could have emerged from their twin scandals of nearly vomiting on the queen at a ball (Hugh) and drunkenly crashing a carriage into the prized glasshouse of a royal duke while attending a house party (Francis). But their elder brother’s treason had sealed their fates.

“This is unacceptable!” Uncle Hugh smashed his fist against the table, causing Aunt Eliza to jump before she slumped back into her chair.

“That can’t be all!” Uncle Francis shouted. “There must be more. The solicitor hasn’t finished speaking yet!”

“Yes. Read on. Read on!” Hugh demanded.

As Mr. Lewis picked up the will once more, the clerks hurried from the room. Eoin followed their movements suspiciously. Were they running to retrieve an equally insulting gift for the women? Yet no one else noticed their exit as everyone’s attention was upon the lawyer.

“‘To my daughters—’” Mr. Lewis read.

“No!” Uncle Hugh’s denial was angry and loud. “He cannot be moving on to my sisters already. Where is my inheritance?”

“And mine!” Uncle Francis echoed.

“You!” Uncle Hugh roared as he turned and hurled his fish flask at Eoin’s head. “You knew of this, you damned sycophant.”

Eoin didn’t dodge the silver missile. Instead, he simply snatched it from the air. He’d always possessed an uncanny deftness that his grandfather had dismissively attributed to his common blood.

“No,” Eoin said. “I did not.”

“Like everyone says, you were his bloody shadow—following him everywhere, doing his bidding. Of course you knew about this bloody letter!”

“C-e-e-ease !” Aunt Eliza’s voice was wavery and faint. “My nerves are already strained, and my head is beginning to ache. Please stop your shouting.”

“Eliza’s right. Yelling won’t solve anything,” Aunt Joan interjected grumpily as she crossed her arms.

“Venting your spleen will at least rebalance your humors,” Uncle Francis announced in his most sagacious tone. He rather sounded like a pompous nincompoop.

“You just want to hear what Father left you, Joan, but I doubt it will be any better than our fish flasks,” Uncle Hugh ground out.

“Ahhhhhhh,” Aunt Eliza breathed out as if she were in physical pain, and perhaps she was. She did seem to suffer from megrims, but Eoin couldn’t assist. She wouldn’t welcome his help, and anything he said would only make her siblings shout more.

“Proceed,” Uncle Hugh snapped at Mr. Lewis, the annoyance in his voice almost palpable. “We might as well get this intolerable exercise over with.”

Mr. Lewis immediately began reading again as if he’d never stopped. “‘As for my girls, I leave them these laying fowls…’”

Again, Mr. Lewis halted to ring the bell. Before the door even opened, Aunt Joan had leaped to her feet, and Aunt Eliza had slumped fully onto the table.

“A laying fowl? What does that even mean?”

As if in answer to her question, the two clerks emerged once more. They each carried a large basket containing a hissing goose.

Uncle Hugh and Uncle Francis laughed almost as uproariously as they had after witnessing Eoin’s ash-filled box. Aunt Joan gasped in horror while Aunt Eliza seemed intent on ignoring the situation.

Mr. Lewis, however, chose to continue his recitation. “‘As Eliza and Joan are nothing but silly geese who lounge about my home, I am providing them with companions who perfectly suit their temperaments.’”

If Eoin had allowed any emotion to show on his face, he would have frowned. Unlike his uncles, his aunts were not deserving of such condemnation. Their misfortunes had been brought upon them by the misconduct of their late husbands—husbands who their father had selected for them. It was not their fault that their spouses had died scandalously and in debt.

“Get that filthy thing away from me!” Joan backed away as one of the clerks approached her.

As Mr. Lewis’s other subordinate placed the second fowl in front of Aunt Eliza, she lifted her head a scant inch. Unfortunately, the bird chose that moment to extend its ghastly-looking tongue, which was shockingly lined with what looked to be serrated teeth. Eliza’s high-pitched scream echoed through the large room and bounced off the ceiling.

Her caterwauling caused the unwanted goose to rise. Below its flapping wings lay a cache of eggs. Abandoning its nest, the bird leaped onto the table. Its webbed feet struggled to find purchase on the lace-covered surface. Slipping and sliding, it waddled frantically, pulling the fabric every which direction.

Uncle Hugh and Uncle Francis clambered to their feet and scurried toward the protection of the wall. Aunt Eliza slumped in her chair while Mr. Lewis simply sat, holding the will, the left corner of his mouth still pointed up. His two clerks wisely decided to retreat from the room, their role fulfilled.

“Do something!” Uncle Hugh roared at Eoin because, even if they didn’t like him, they still expected him to solve everything that plagued them.

Eoin stood up and stalked toward the goose, who promptly half ran and half glided in the opposite direction. Eoin made one swipe, but he only touched two tail feathers.

“It’s moving!” Aunt Eliza suddenly screeched.

Eoin turned to see her staring in horror at one of the eggs, which had indeed begun to shake back and forth. The gosling inside was clearly in the process of hatching, but the sight was unsettling, especially to someone as prone to nerves as Aunt Eliza. However, instead of simply backing away from the basket as Eoin would have expected, Aunt Eliza chose to reach inside, grab the egg, and then hurl it.

Eoin acted on instinct and dove for the delicate projectile. After all, the creature inside was striving with all its might to be born into this world. How terrible would it be for that hope of life to be literally dashed against the floor?

Eoin landed painfully on his stomach, but the force of his plunge shot his body forward. Reaching out one long arm, he was just able to softly catch the egg before it hit the ground.

“You are to secure the filthy goose, not the egg, John!” Hugh demanded.

Eoin, however, ignored his uncle as he strode to the bellpull in the corner of the room. Unlike Mr. Lewis’s hand-held one, this chime would call the house servants. Sure enough, a footman popped into the room a few seconds later. To the young man’s credit, he remained stone-faced at the spectacle before him.

“Peter, can you bring Ann to catch the geese? My understanding is she recently came from the country, and she grew up on a tenant farm. Also, bring two more footmen with you to carry off the birds and their baskets,” Eoin said, ignoring the utter chaos too.

Peter nodded and hastily exited. He returned promptly with Ann, a wide-eyed lass of seventeen. It was clear that the maid was overwhelmed by being called into a meeting of the noble family, but she very expertly wrangled each fowl. Within moments, not even a single feather remained in the room, and a semblance of peace descended—or rather it would have if Aunt Eliza hadn’t commenced sobbing and Uncle Hugh hadn’t taken to muttering curse words.

Eoin, however, felt more at ease than he had since he’d open his box of ashes. If his aunts and uncles had received nothing, they were dependent on him and desperate for funds. He could easily pay them to tell him what they knew of his mother. Eoin doubted that they were aware of her location, but they must at least remember her maiden name. Perhaps they could even describe her. Eoin had only hazy memories of eyes as blue-green as his own and a voice singing to him in a lilting Irish accent.

“Let us all sit,” Eoin said. As his relatives complied, he turned to the solicitor. “Mr. Lewis, if you would be so kind as to finish the rest of the letter.”

“Certainly,” Mr. Lewis said. This time when he read, he left the paper lying on the lace cloth. “‘If my four children wish to receive any more from my estate, they must earn it. It should not be difficult as it only requires that they do nothing. I have set up a trust with my unentailed wealth. For every five years that Viscount Malbarry does not locate either his mother or his sister, you’ll receive one hundred pounds each. After twenty years, you shall jointly inherit Windy Hill.’”

Bloody hell. The old sot had been uncannily devious, even until the end. Although the estates produced enough income that Eoin could technically pay his relatives more than the trust, the price was simply too stiff. Too many souls depended on the duchy for their livelihoods, and Eoin wouldn’t siphon away large amounts from the coffers. And he had no idea how he could compensate his aunts and uncles for the Windy Hill property, even if the house and the lands were relatively small compared to the rest of Eoin’s holdings.

His relatives would be loath to help him even without the incentive that his grandfather had just offered from the grave. Now Eoin truly had no leads, and he doubted his mother would reach out to him. Even though his memories of his parents were fuzzy at best, he did recall his grandfather threatening to use his power to send Eoin’s sister to a far-flung girls’ school and to have his mother hanged for treason if she ever tried to interfere in Eoin’s life.

Dimly, Eoin heard his aunts and uncles protest about the unfairness of waiting for their inheritance, but Eoin couldn’t listen anymore. He’d spent years building fortification after fortification around his emotions, but for the first time in a long while, he felt a crack. A small crack but a crack nonetheless. And he did not want to break in front of Mr. Lewis and his paternal relations.

Without offering an explanation, Eoin stood and strolled from the room. He heard Uncle Hugh yelling “Stop,” but Eoin didn’t listen. He was duke now—even if he otherwise felt as powerless as he always had in this household.

As a boy, when he felt he could no longer endure his grandfather’s endless restrictions, he’d slink away to the gardens behind the London townhouse. Now, however, he merely walked through the French doors leading from one of the sitting rooms onto the veranda. He couldn’t leave the grounds, couldn’t run from his responsibilities as duke, but he could afford himself this single, momentary retreat.

He weaved through the overgrown pathways, as flowers and plants had never been his grandfather’s priority. He stopped in front of a folly built in the shape of a circular keep. The whimsical structure had been ordered by the late duchess, the grandmother who had died long before Eoin’s birth. He wished that he felt some connection to her, some solace. But there was none.

With a sigh, he entered the structure. Nothing was inside. Not even an old, forgotten bench. Ignoring his silk finery, Eoin plopped on the ground and rested his back against the cool interior stonework.

Just then he felt a curious warmth on his palm. Glancing down, he found a little gosling lying partially in its cracked shell with its head nestled against Eoin’s skin. He’d forgotten all about the egg that he’d rescued from his aunt’s panicked fit.

Pink dimpled skin peeked out from between yellowy-brown feathers as the baby animal wiggled back and forth. With its down still wet, the gosling looked unbearably small and breakable. Yet despite its fragility, it still valiantly struggled to free itself from the confines that it had known its entire existence.

Could Eoin be so determinedly resourceful?

“You are a fierce little one,” Eoin said, and then immediately felt sheepish. It wasn’t in his nature to talk to animals as if they could understand his words. Yet now he found himself doing so in less than a space of a fortnight. Last time, he’d even awkwardly bowed to a sharp-tongued parrot named Pan.

Eoin couldn’t stop his lips from twitching upward as he thought about that particular evening. But it wasn’t the bird or even his own actions that brought a glint of amusement to his otherwise miserable day. No—it was the memory of Pan’s mistress: Miss Hannah Wick.

The redhead was precisely the type of female that Eoin had been taught to avoid. Her father was an English-born pirate who’d seduced and married the daughter of a viscount. Then, instead of having the grace to simply run back to the Caribbean and fade into distant memory, the society-defying couple had set up a coffeehouse in London that catered to all sundry of misfits, reformers, and downright dissidents.

They were exactly the kind of people that Eoin’s grandfather abhorred, but Eoin secretly admired.

Although Miss Wick’s family history had intrigued Eoin, it was her boldness that had utterly captivated him. At their first meeting, he’d been dressed in the clothes of a farm laborer, and she hadn’t known his position as an heir to a dukedom. Yet when she’d laid eyes on him, Eoin had watched interest flare to life in her grass-green eyes. And Miss Wick, with her hoydenish expression and the wild Titian curls escaping her coiffure, had caused a rebellious want to riot through all of Eoin’s staidness.

Perhaps it was because no woman had ever looked at him so brazenly. His height, title, and reputation for aloofness made debutantes and even their matchmaking mamas uneasy. Oh, they still flirted—he’d been an heir to a dukedom after all—but the coyness was always forced and definitely calculated. And Eoin had never known how to respond to their machinations. Yet there had been no artifice in Miss Hannah Wick’s undisguised appreciation of his physique, and his own response had flowed naturally from him.

She’d even called him “storm-worthy,” a clear innuendo that she’d like to breach all his walls. And, swounds, at that moment, he’d been ready to let his every defense crumble for her. But she and her companions had been in the middle of solving a mystery, and there had been no time for more than her few flirtatious words.

Solving a mystery.

Energy shot through Eoin, and his heart squeezed at the onslaught. The Black Sheep Coffeehouse was fast gaining a reputation as the place to go to receive help in unraveling enigmas.

And Eoin had the very devil of one. Even better, he would see Miss Wick again.

I cannot believe that you allowed me to flirt with a bloody viscount!” Hannah Wick skewered her maternal cousin, Lady Charlotte, with her best glare.

And Hannah was an absolute champion at glowering. After all, her ability to convey authority and outrage with her eyes was an extremely valuable asset when it came to dealing with unruly customers at the Black Sheep Coffeehouse, which Hannah ran with Charlotte and her paternal cousin, Sophia.

Unlike most, Charlotte didn’t squirm under Hannah’s gaze as the three proprietresses washed dishes together in the back room of their establishment. However, the noblewoman may have permitted a single, demure swallow. Hannah couldn’t be entirely sure. Charlotte was always the picture of polite poise, the inverse of Hannah’s own rough-and-tumble presence.

“Well, given the particular circumstances at the time, it seemed most prudent—” Charlotte began to say in that gracious, kind way of hers. When Hannah had first reunited with her estranged relative, Charlotte’s demeanor had grated, but now Hannah had grown rather fond of her.

Sophia broke in to the conversation. “What Charlotte is trying to delicately say is that it wasn’t the time to be dramatic.”

“Dramatic! DRA-MA-TIC!” Hannah hung on to the last word, fully aware and not caring that she was proving Sophia’s point. “Why shouldn’t I be dramatic over this? He’s not just any ordinary viscount, is he? And it’s not even that he’s next in line for a dukedom. He will be Foxglen—the FOX-GLEN—someday.”

Sophia reached out and patted Hannah’s arm. “But even then, he won’t be the duke who stole farmland from our grandparents and then sent our starving fathers to the Colonies when they were caught poaching. That is the current Foxglen’s sin, not Malbarry’s.”

“Pfft.” Hannah barely stopped herself from slamming down the ceramic coffee cup that she’d been cleaning. “Any member of the Aucourte family is a nemesis of ours by default.”

Sophia rolled her eyes as she gently disentangled the breakable piece from Hannah’s grip and began to dry it. “We are the daughters of pirates. If we engaged in blood feuds, we’d have nothing but enemies. There is a reason that our investigations have always centered primarily on Foxglen.”

“What do you mean, your investigations?” Charlotte asked as she stacked the earthenware neatly on the shelves behind the serving counter.

“Something is fishy about the Aucourtes,” Hannah said. “For over a decade, there’s been rumors of illicit dealings. Papa wanted to pursue the whispers, but my mother and Aunt Mary talked him out of his revenge. They didn’t want to bring scrutiny upon the coffeehouse.” The establishment was originally a meeting place for London outcasts, including reformers, ex-prisoners, and folks rescued from slavery and indentured servitude by Sophia’s mother, who was known on the high seas as Brave Mary.

“And now I’ve gone and drawn attention to the Black Sheep by opening the back room,” Charlotte sighed. The hidden space for men and women from all social strata to mingle had conversely become one of the most gossiped about locales in London.

Sophia waved her dishtowel dismissively. “The coffeehouse isn’t in the same precarious financial position that it was when Hannah’s parents first established it. Besides, your strategy increased business by twofold.”

“Your plan has truly been a boon, Charlotte,” Hannah agreed. Originally, she hadn’t been keen on her noble cousin’s suggestion, . . .