With This Kiss: A Compelled into Marriage Romance

A Gilded Age novella series from Constance Kent:

Jane Silver has always relied on her intelligence to insulate her from feeling anything. But when she is kissed by a stranger in the street, her intelligence fails her spectacularly. 

Hawksley Welland is a New York gilt-edged playboy and a drunk. A man careening on the edge of disaster, he’s burning bridges faster than he can run. Kissing a young woman in the street is the last straw for Great Aunt Agnes who is in charge of his trust. He will marry the girl or he will lose everything. 

Jane can't be forced into marriage over something as trivial as her reputation. But with a rare book in her possession, she decides to take the risk, intending to cloister herself in the Welland library, safely removed from feeling.

She didn't realize a mere kiss from a dissolute but gorgeous stranger would have the power to break down her walls and upend her very soul.