The Village Midwife Stayed When the Duke Was Dying — She Did Not Yet Know Who Was Poisoning Him

A widowed Cornish midwife is summoned through storm-light to the dying Duke of Tremaine — and stays three nights of vigil only to discover that the cup she is fighting holds foxglove and laudanum, poured by a steward in the pay of the Duke's charming half-brother. When Marin Penhale arrives at Tremaine House in the autumn of 1822, she finds the young Duke convulsing on the floor of his dead twin sister's birth-room. A screaming three-day-old niece is beside the cradle. The household has gone hollow with mourning. The physician has been refused. The wet-nurse comes and goes. There is only the midwife, the maid, and a child who needs hands to hold her. For three nights Marin holds the Duke to breath and the niece to milk, and slowly — by the dose, by the cup, by the steward's quiet letters — she understands that the Duke is being killed by inches. The hand pouring the cup belongs to a name she has not yet met: Captain Crispin Ashford, the Duke's legitimate half-brother and next in the male line. He needs both Duke and infant gone to seize the dukedom and the niece's separate inheritance. When the Captain arrives at Tremaine House with a forged unsound-mind petition, Marin and the Duke have one move left: a marriage by special license at dawn, the apothecary-maid's daily-dose journal, the village apothecary's purchase logbook charged to the Captain's own account — and a single line spoken in the parish vestry that ends his claim and his liberty in the same sentence. A late-Regency English historical romance set on the Cornish coast in the 1820s. Featuring a competent widow heroine, a wounded duke, a marriage of convenience that becomes a chosen one, a poisoning plot, a courtroom-style vestry climax, and an orchard epilogue eighteen months on, in which an orphaned niece takes her first steps from her uncle's hands to her aunt's. A quiet, dialogue-led, drama-lane historical romance audio story. No graphic content. Suitable for evening listening, long drives, and rainy nights. 🎧 If you enjoyed this story, please like, subscribe, and ring the bell so you don't miss the next one. #RegencyRomance #HistoricalRomance #DukeRomance #MarriageOfConvenience #PeriodDrama #RegencyAudiobook #HistoricalRomanceAudiobook #CleanRomance #MidwifeAndDuke #CornishRomance #1820sRomance #BritishHistoricalRomance #RomanceAudioStory #HistoricalFiction #WidowRomance