I read this as part of a challenge. It really isn't my genre, but it was OK. It is about Cecile, who has escaped France with her father, and the duke - a family friend. On the voyage, both her father and the duke die, but not before Cecile gets married to the duke. However, she doesn't think anyone will believe her, so she doesn't claim her marriage rights.
Years later, she is with a London circus, where she is a star, and meets a man. While she is attracted to him, she avoids acting on it for awhile, until she makes a deal with him. The story progresses and of course, they fall in love, but there are problems.
OK book - if you like historical romance with a bit of royalty, this is for you. ( )

The Dueling Duchess by Minerva Spencer is the second book in the Wicked Women of Whitechapel series, which is set in a female circus, Farnham's Fantastical Female Fayre. Cecile Tremblay is a sharp-shooter, still extraordinarily beautiful at thirty-six years old. Twenty-two years ago, in the uncertainty of the French Revolution, she was secretly married to an elderly duke in order to preserve his property, but the documents have been lost and Cecile has kept the marriage a secret. In the previous book, The Boxing Baroness, Cecile fell in love with Gaius Darlington, Marquess of Carlisle and heir to a dukedom, who, unwilling to realise how much he loved Cecile, had insulted her by inviting her to become his paid mistress while he financed his impoverished estates by marrying an heiress. Gaius, known as Guy, has now come to his senses and is determined to marry Cecile, but she will have nothing to do with him, so he joins the circus. The timeline leaps back and forth between Cecile's and Guy's love affair a year ago, when they were travelling through France in a circus caravan in search of another character's kidnapped younger brother, and the present in which another heir has turned up to usurp Guy's title and property and Cecile is being manipulated by a wicked cousin who knows her secrets. There are numerous minor characters and plenty of drama and plot twists.

Cecile is a few years older than Guy, which is a departure. I liked both main characters and was keen for them to sort out their many problems and end up happily together. I also liked the humorous repartee and the lively writing.

Thanks to NetGalley and Kensington Books for this ARC. ( )

Dreams and fortunes, lost and found!

Manon Cecile Tremblay Blanchet and Gaius Darlington, the Marquess of Carlisle, the Darling of the Ton. Their story is essentially a second chance romance with heaps of moving parts.
Cecile is a French duchess by a sorry set of circumstances. Married at fourteen, in 1794, to the aged Duc de La Fontaine as he lay dying in the notorious French prison, La Force.
Cecile is a sharp shooter extraordinaire and a feisty woman who has had to make her way in the world from the time she and her father left Paris just after the marriage. Her father was personal gunmaker to Lewis XVI. He taught Cecile everything. He perished in the attempt to reach England. Her cousin was supposed to help Cecile, instead he stole her father’s designs then kicked her out.
Now, twenty-two years after Cecile left Paris she is a member of the Farnham’s Fantastical Female Fayre, as a sharp shooter.
The Fayre is going to Paris. Sin, the Duke of Staunton, needs to find out if his brother Ben is still alive. Guy is going with him. They are going incognito as circus roustabouts and assistants.
In this period Cecile and Guy become lovers, no strings attached. To keep the Dukedom financially viable he however has to marry an heiress. Cecile was insulted when Guy wanted to take a wife and keep Cecile as his mistress. She despised him for trying to have his cake and eat it. Exit Guy from her life.
Later Guy finds out that he’s not the heir to the Dukedom and it’s responsibilities, because a cousin who's turned up appears to have all the requisite papers. So Guy breaks off his engagement to the heiress, settles his mother and his two sisters who are unmarried, and gets himself rehired by Cecile again as a general dogsbody in the Fayre. More adventures!
Things begin to happen. The new duke is removing family treasures in the middle of the night. No-one wants to know including the family solicitors. Cecile is being pressed to marry by an old foe of Guy’s.
Blade and Eliot are still around proving remarkably elusive and yet adapt at sussing out information.
Just when things are settling down, Cecile’s title comes into play.
An enjoyable read, although somewhat confusing. I found myself looking back to see what happened when. The plot wanders between the past and the present quite readily, I not so much. I often lost my place between the times. Ah well!

A Kensington Books ARC via NetGalley.
Many thanks to the author and publisher. ( )