Review: The Duke at Hazard by KJ Charles

Title: The Duke at Hazard

Series: The Gentlemen of Uncertain Fortune: Book Two

Author: KJ Charles

Publisher: Orion

Length: 326 Pages

Category: Historical Romance

Rating: 4 Stars

At a Glance: This author writes a lovely scoundrel. In The Duke at Hazard, she writes two lovely cinnamon rolls whose happy ending was well deserved.

Reviewed By: Lisa

Blurb: The Duke of Severn is one of the greatest men in Britain.

He’s also short, quiet, and unimpressive. And now he’s been robbed, after indulging in one rash night with a strange man who stole the heirloom Severn ring from his finger. The Duke has to get it back, and he can’t let anyone know how he lost it. So when his cousin bets that he couldn’t survive without his privilege and title, the Duke grasps the opportunity to hunt down his ring-incognito.

Life as an ordinary person is terrifying… until the anonymous Duke meets Daizell Charnage, a disgraced gentleman, and hires him to help. Racing across the country in search of the thief, the Duke and Daizell fall into scrapes, into trouble-and in love.

Daizell has been excluded from polite society, his name tainted by his father’s crimes and his own misbehaviour. Now he dares to dream of a life somewhere out of sight with the quiet gentleman who’s stolen his heart. He doesn’t know that his lover is a hugely rich public figure with half a dozen titles. And when he finds out, it will risk everything they have…

Review: KJ Charles has such a prolific back catalog of historical fiction, yet this is the first novel she’s written that features a Duke. Why that is I have no idea, other than perhaps the honorific isn’t as prevalent as the Romance genre would have us believe. Whatever the reason, Charles permits the Duke of Severn to be much more than the duty thrust on him upon his father’s death, and seeing who is behind and beyond the title is a lovely journey.

A series of unfortunate events leads Severn on his adventure from dukedom to commoner. He returns to his estate after a night with a stranger who has robbed him blind, to accept a bet with his cousin that he, Severn, couldn’t survive a month as an ordinary citizen—no servants, no private coaches, no luxurious accommodations. Little does anyone understand how much Severn wants to be more than the title that was handed to him by virtue of his parentage, with a ring that’s now been stolen and which he will chase down across and through the countryside, using the wager as his cover. Meeting Daizell Charnage and enlisting his help to find a thief becomes the true boon on the Duke’s quest.

Daizell is introduced to a man called Cassian, one of the many names the Duke of Severn is known by. Or would be, if anyone allowed him to be a whole person rather than just his royal designation. This story is one of forced proximity, lies of omission, and two kind and conscientious men coming to trust and love each other. Until, of course, the pivotal moment when Daizell discovers the truth. Through danger and daring and acts of gallantry, readers become intimately acquainted with who these men are beyond the rumors, secrets, and privileges of birth. Their separate and connected routes of self-discovery, believing that they are each so much more than they believe themselves to be, is complemented by Charles’s lush writing and commitment to representing the Regency era to its most vivid and robust.

This author writes a lovely scoundrel. In The Duke at Hazard, she writes two lovely cinnamon rolls whose happy ending was well deserved.