seriously romantic: denying the duke by callie hutton

lady patience has been bullied and ordered about without fail by her father, by the fiancé she never wanted, and finally by lord alexander, the new duke of beresford. the man she fell in love with when she was but sixteen and who left her behind when she was forced into a betrothal with his brother. she spends a lot of time out of control of her own life in denying the duke.

when alex left he assumed that his brother, cyrus, would marry patience quickly. but on his return to his estate after his brother's death and four years in the military under his belt, he finds that nothing is what he thought it would be. as much as he would like to pick up where they left off, too many things have happened to them separately that it's impossible to recapture the five-day idyll when they first fell in love.

but the spark between them is still there. and maybe they aren't the same young fools in love, but there's a chance that they could find a richer, deeper sort of love together. the problem is that they are forever not communicating with each other and making assumptions about how the other person is feeling. all they need is to be locked together in a room and to not just talk but listen to each other. because the love they discovered four years earlier is still there. (and when you think about it, it does make total sense that they are complete idiots in love, she's only just twenty and he's twenty-five, sure that passed for adult in the regency era, but they're kids. i mean, alex wears a mustache to look older for god's sake. they're kids.) this was an enjoyable regency, and even though part of a series, it totally stands alone.

**denying the duke will publish on july 10, 2017. i received an advance reader copy courtesy of netgalley/entangled publishing (scandalous) in exchange for my honest review.