A Wicked Husband

After years away on the battlefield, Archduke Cesare returns home transformed—and to Eileen, he is nearly unrecognizable. Gone is the man she once knew, replaced by someone colder and more commanding, his every glance shadowed by a desire he refuses to speak aloud. Yet his changed demeanor is nothing compared to what he asks of her: an abrupt, unexpected proposal of marriage that turns her carefully ordered world upside down. With his return, emotions Eileen believed she had long buried begin to stir anew, pulling her toward a past she thought she had left behind. But the suitor standing before her now is both familiar and foreign—a man of sharp edges and smoldering intensity, whose very presence makes her heart race with equal parts longing and dread. The warmth she feels in his orbit carries an unmistakable danger, as though it could ignite at any moment and swallow her whole. Caught between memory and fear, Eileen faces an impossible decision: accept his hand and risk surrendering herself entirely to the passion burning between them, or flee before the fire smoldering beneath his icy exterior consumes them both.