I knelt at a dying man's bedside and swore I would protect his daughter.I had never met her.I am Julian Blackwood, Earl of Ashworth, and a year later that promise arrives in a letter that nearly stops my heart.By order of the Court of Chancery, I am now sole guardian of Miss Charlotte Grey — eighteen years old, motherless, and entirely my responsibility until she marries or comes of age.I hold her annuity.I approve or refuse any suitor for her hand.She is, in every way the law allows, a prisoner.And I am a man with empty coffers, a crumbling estate, and a mother who reminds me in every letter that the sensible match — the necessary match — is the heiress Viola Markham, who is determined to become my countess.Charlotte Grey was never meant to be more than a duty.But she arrives clever as a whip and unafraid of me, a girl who only ever wanted to be allowed to read, and the house that was supposed to merely shelter her begins, somehow, to wake up around her.I tell myself I feel nothing.I write letters to her that I never send.Then a dance changes everything, and I am no longer pretending.I cannot have her.I am her guardian. I am promised elsewhere. The whole of society would call it the worst kind of scandal.And there is a poison in my past, and an heiress who will not be set aside, both circling the one truth I have hidden even from myself."The cost of loving you," I told her, in the moment everything broke, "is more than either of us can afford."She deserves freedom, not a cage with my name on the lock.But regret is a splinter, and a promise made to a dying friend was never meant to cost me my own heart.If I want her, I will have to open the one door I swore I would keep shut — and risk everything I was raised to protect.The Earl's Inconvenient Ward is a tender, forbidden Regency romance about a guardian and his ward, an impossible promise, public humiliation, a rival heiress, buried secrets, and a love neither of them was supposed to feel.Perfect for readers who love guardian-ward romance, forbidden love, brooding wounded earls, spirited bookish heroines, slow-burn Regency longing, and historical romance with a hard-earned happy ending. A standalone Regency romance.