The Confessions of a Duchess (Brides of Fortune Series) Book

Started out strong: our heroine is thirty-four, a widowed duchess and single mother, not really mourning the loss of her late husband; the hero is six years her junior (leading people to say things like "she's nearly old enough to be your mother," which in the regency wasn't far off) and the two of them had a brief and ill-advised affair during her marriage, which she ended by telling the hero to go away, she didn't love him after all (which, obviously, was only to protect him from destroying his career by continuing the relationship). The overarching series plot - an idiot discovers a medieval law by which he can demand a tithe of fifty percent of all single women's fortunes within a year, so the ladies have to marry or fight back - is cute verging on cutesy, but the sort of thing I'll put up with in a regency romance novel. Then we add a half-baked political suspense/mystery plot, a secret organization of highwaywomen (yes you heard me), the hero's decision to sacrifice himself in marriage to an heiress to keep providing money to his profligate family although no thought is given to what he'll do once they run through his wife's money, and enough other nonsense that the book kind of deflates under it all. I was skimming by the end, so no completion date.