The Duke Who Banned Christmas

“He shut the drawing room, stripped the hall, and forbade Christmas in his house. Then his little niece began lighting a candle in the north window.”

Wilhelmina “Mina” Frayne has kept the late Duke of Ellersden’s daughter fed for two years, in rooms above a chandler’s shop in Bath, paying the rent with fine sewing and going without her own dinner when the money runs short. When she finally wrote to the family’s solicitors for help, they sent her a printed form telling her not to write again.

Then a carriage arrives from the north, and Mina travels with the child she loves to a vast, cold house where she has no position, no wage, and no promise of staying past the New Year.

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