PROLOGUE

All of London is shocked: The Beast is injured. At yesterday’s boxing match, the Devil pummeled the Beast with a force worthy of his Satanic name. 

London has a taken a breath. No one has seen the Beast. Is this the last we’ll see of our aristocratic boxer? 

CHAPTER ONE

London, 1822

“Bath?” Reginald Smythe, Duke of Hammett, stared at his doctor. “You must be mad.”

Dr. Fitzhugh leaned back in his red leather armchair with the comfortable smile of a man confident his career would continue to flourish, even if Reggie were to usher a litany of complaints. “I doubt you would pay me my high fees if that were the case.”

“I didn’t expect you would suggest I visit Bath.” Reggie shuddered as he uttered the word. The word may have been one syllable, but that didn’t make it any easier to utter. 

Reggie didn’t go to Bath. 

Reggie was a boxer. 

Bath was the domain of little old ladies with too much money who wanted to stick their toes in some supposedly healing water from the Roman period, as if the water possessed magical powers. Modern people who became sick ventured to Brighton or somewhere else on the sea. Bath was a place to avoid. 

Reggie crossed his arms and glared. “I can’t go to Bath.” 

Dr. Fitzhugh smiled and ran his finger over one of his sideburns in a frustratingly calm manner. “Of course, you can.” 

Reggie despised it when his doctor adopted this tone. It made Reggie think his doctor was using the skills he’d obtained from being a father of five, and that made Reggie think he was behaving in a childish manner. Obviously, that wasn’t the case, even if Reggie enjoyed smashing things with a vigor mostly seen in two-year-olds. 

Reggie narrowed his gaze. “No one sane goes to Bath.”

“I assure you, plenty of people do,” Dr. Fitzhugh said. “It’s much improved over the past two decades.”

Reggie’s scowl deepened. How old did the doctor think he was? “I paid little attention to Bath as a six-year-old.”

“Of course not,” his doctor said in a soothing tone. “You were probably enjoying the fresh air. Clambering up trees. Rowing in lakes.” 

Reggie snorted. Clearly, the doctor had a much more idyllic opinion of Reggie’s childhood than was the case. No one mentioned the cold of a large, crumbling estate that one’s father had insisted on purchasing, and no one mentioned the dreariness when simply running through halls made every servant berate him and tell him the noise might cause his mother to die. 

Perhaps it had. Reggie shook his head. That was absurd. No doubt the servants preferred to gossip without the accompanying sound of pitter-pattering feet, lest the sound throw them off delivering their various punchlines. Reggie hadn’t caused his mother to get consumption, and he hadn’t caused her to die. 

Most likely. 

“I don’t enjoy talking about my childhood,” Reggie said stiffly. 

His doctor rolled his eyes. “Good. Then we can discuss your bad knee. You can’t box if you don’t make a full recovery.” 

Reggie knew this. That was why Reggie had gone to see the doctor. Still, hearing the words out loud caused his body to jerk involuntarily. 

The doctor’s eyes softened with a look he would probably call understanding and which probably won him accolades from patients who liked their doctors to pity them, seeing it as inspiration for the doctor to perform his healing wonders. 

Reggie disagreed. Reggie preferred the doctor to leap directly to the healing portion. Unfortunately, Dr. Fitzhugh seemed disinclined to do that. 

“There’s a good doctor in Bath who can help you,” Dr. Fitzhugh said. 

Reggie glowered and drew his feet away from the doctor. The sudden movement caused pain to ricochet through him, and he strove not to grimace. 

“That hurt,” the doctor said.

“I’m fine.”

“If it doesn’t heal, it will only hurt more later.”

For a man with an avuncular smile and twinkling eyes, the doctor said the most despicable things. 

“So if I see this doctor, I won’t have to give up boxing,” Reggie asked carefully. 

“I can’t make any promises.” Dr. Fitzhugh’s face sobered. “But I know I can’t help you any more with this.” 

Reggie leaned back. 

His doctor tilted his head and scanned Reggie’s face. “You haven’t been sleeping.” 

“Nonsense.” Reggie averted his gaze, as if the sudden movement might mask his scars. He knew he looked terrible. He loathed everyone’s pitying glances and the odd horrified gasp his presence inspired.

“The area under your eyes is dark, and your skin has a pasty pallor.” Fitzhugh avoided mentioning Reggie’s scars as he scribbled something on a piece of paper. Clearly he knew there was nothing to be done about them. The doctor handed him the paper. “This is Dr. Richard Everett Smythe-Essex’s address. I suggest you write and tell him you will see him in Bath.” 

Reggie scrunched up his face into a glower. 

“Take the paper,” Dr. Fitzhugh ordered. 

Reggie reluctantly extended an arm. He scanned the address, then tucked the paper in his purse.

“I also recommend you take chamomile tea,” the doctor said. “It will improve your sleep.”

Reggie shuddered. Chamomile and Bath. 

“Dr. Richard Everett Smythe-Essex is discreet,” his doctor assured him.

“He better be,” Reggie growled. 

If Reggie was going to Bath, he didn’t want other people to learn of it. The last thing his competitors needed to know was that he would be spending time in a spa town known to cater to people prone to imagining illnesses and yeasty milk buns crammed with candied sultanas. Reggie rose, took his cane, then marched inelegantly from his doctor’s office. 

She’s determined to find him a match… whether he’s ready or not.

Miss Daisy Holloway is in need of a position and fortunately she knows the best one: matchmaker. After all, she has no intention of staying in her family’s home forever. Daisy might not yet be England’s premiere matchmaker, but she is certain she will be once she convinces the Duke of Hammett, Bath’s newest temporary resident, to let her find him a bride. What better way to start her career than to find the perfect bride for a duke? And what more difficult duke to match than the dour, perpetually grumpy Duke of Hammett?

The only thing worse than being injured in a boxing match for Reginald Smythe, Duke of Hammett, is being forced to go to Bath to heal. There’s a reason that the broadsheets have called him the Beast, and it’s not because of spending time in a spa town to recuperate. Reggie certainly has no need of a wife, despite what a particular aspiring, definitely pushy matchmaker desires.

At least, he thought he didn’t desire a wife.

USA TODAY Bestselling Author Bianca Blythe has written over twenty fun and frothy Regency-set historical romances, filled with wallflowers, spinsters, dukes, and rogues. On occasion, she also writes historical mysteries under the name Camilla Blythe.

Born in Texas, Bianca earned her bachelor's degree from Wellesley College and completed a graduate degree in her beloved Boston. She spent four years in England, working in a fifteenth-century castle. Sadly she never spotted dukes and earls strutting about in Hessians.

Bianca credits British weather for forcing her into a library, where she discovered her first Julia Quinn novel. She remains deeply grateful for blustery downpours. 

After meeting her husband in another library, she moved with him to sunny California. On occasion she still dreams of the English seaside, scones with clotted cream, and sheep-filled pastures. For now, she visits them in her books.