Sign-In
Cart
A Duke's Impossible Governess: A Regency Time Travel Romance
Paperback
Publisher: Independently Published
Published: Aug 17 2026
Pages: 226
Weight: 0.61
Height: 0.57 Width: 6.00 Depth: 9.00
Language: English
A cipher pulled her through a dead woman's diary and into a murder that was never solved.
Gwen Foster writes the best history lessons at her school and gets none of the credit. So when she finally has a quiet evening alone with a two-hundred-year-old diary and its uncracked cipher, she isn't looking for anything but the satisfaction of solving it. She isn't looking for a door.
She wakes in 1813, mistaken for a governess named Miss Bly, and is hired within the hour to teach the silent, grieving daughter of Everett Chandos, Duke of Ellsmere. The diary belonged to his late wife. The cipher is still unbroken. And somewhere in its pages is the truth about how she really died.
Everett has spent three years deciding what his household can bear instead of asking them. Gwen has spent her whole life being kept only for what she can fix. Neither of them is prepared for a code that makes them read each other as carefully as the page, one entry at a time, by lamplight, long after the house has gone to sleep.
Every volume they decode together brings them closer, and closer to a fire that will destroy the evidence in nine weeks. The old duke died conveniently. The books were tidied by a hand that tidies after itself. And the duke's own cousin has motive, means, and a great deal to lose if the last entry is ever read aloud, to the one it was written for.
The rule of the diary cuts both ways. It can send her home. It might, if a careful man ever learns to say a thing plainly and put it in writing, be the only thing that can bring her back.
Stay was always the word.
THE DUKE'S IMPOSSIBLE GOVERNESS is a standalone Regency time-travel romance with a murder mystery running underneath it: one heroine who reads people for a living, one duke who has never once asked for what he wants, a household of secrets, and a diary that only opens for the truth. Guaranteed HEA, no cliffhangers, no cheating.
Also from
Hayes, Ashley
The Duchess's Revenge: She Counted Every Debt. He Lost Everything but His Honor. A Regency Romance
Hayes, Ashley
Paperback
The Viscount's Scandal: Two Brilliant Minds. One Stolen Legacy. A Regency Romance
Hayes, Ashley
Paperback
The Earl's Wallflower: A Wallflower. An Earl. A Cipher That Changes Everything. A Regency Romance
Hayes, Ashley
Paperback
The Duke's Time Traveling Bride: She Fell Through Time. A Regency Time Traveling Romance.
Hayes, Ashley
Paperback
Also in
Romance
That Time I Got Drunk and Yeeted a Love Potion at a Werewolf (Mead Mishaps, Book 2)
Kimberly Lemming
Paperback
Sabine's Notebook: In Which the Extraordinary Correspondence of Griffin & Sabine Continues
Bantock, Nick
Hardcover
The Golden Mean: In Which the Extraordinary Correspondence of Griffin & Sabine Concludes
Bantock, Nick
Hardcover
The Auction (Deluxe Limited Edition): A Spicy, Dark Romance Novel from a Tiktok Sensation
Kincaid, Sadie
Hardcover