No Groom at the Inn — Megan Frampton

In this Dukes Behaving Badly holiday novella, a young lady entertains a sudden proposal of marriage to a man she's only just met

What does a lady do when a man she's never seen before offers his hand in marriage? Lady Sophronia Bettesford doesn't scream and run away. Instead, she accepts the shocking proposition. After all, what's her other choice? To live with her cousin, caring for six children and a barnyard full of chickens?

James Archer has roamed the world, determined never to settle down. He's faced danger and disaster -- he fears nothing and no one except his mother and her matchmaking ways. So when ordered to attend a Christmastime house party filled with holiday cheer and simpering young misses, he produces a fiancee

Sophronia and James vow to pretend to be in love for one month. But when they promise to give each other a Christmas kiss, it becomes clear that this pact made out of necessity might just be turning into love.