Length7h 12m
About this audiobook
The claret is good. Alistair holds it on his tongue a moment, savouring the delay, while his mother addresses the candelabra rather than her son. A new roof will not produce an heir, she tells the flames. A wife will.
He answers with the plaster cracking in the blue salon and the tenant cottage at Millford Lane that collapsed last Tuesday, nearly crushing an old man and his wife. His cousin Rupert calls him the champion of the peasantry and turns the rings on his right hand, a nervous habit Alistair catalogued years ago.
Then Rupert mentions the ledgers. There are payments, quite regular and quite discreet, to a solicitor in Millford, beginning before Alistair inherited. *"I merely wondered what he required a solicitor for, so regularly, so… privately."*
Alistair pleads a headache and escapes to the dark library, where somebody is already standing by the fireplace with a book closed against his chest, one finger marking the page.
Felix Ashworth is the solicitor's son. He wrote three days ago requesting access to the account ledgers for the past decade, and the letter was misplaced. His coat is well made and worn at the cuffs, kept clean through effort, and he does not bow.
Alistair has spent five years quietly paying off debts his father left behind, and longer than that keeping still. He was seventeen once, and there was a man in the stables named William with hands like leather and a laugh that made the horses prick their ears, and Alistair's father dismissed him without a reference and promised prosecution if he ever spoke of it.
He has not said William's name aloud in twelve years.
What Rupert wants is the title, and Rupert is patient, and Rupert is the heir presumptive should Alistair die without issue. What Margaret wants is Miss Whitmore of Whitmore Hall, who has come to stay for the summer. What Alistair wants is the one thing that would cost him the estate, the family and his freedom all at once.
*"You'll ruin us." "I'll save us. There's a difference."*
A closed-door historical MM romance of ledgers, tenant cottages and a magistrate at dinner, ending in a rented cottage with a shelf being hammered into a wall and a man deciding to start writing something of his own.
Audiobook details
GenreRomance, Biography and Memoir
Length7 hrs 12 mins
Narrated byListen with 1,000+ voices
FormateBook with Audio
LanguageEnglish
Table of contents
1Dedication
2Chapter 1 - The Debt I Cannot Name
3Chapter 2 - The Book That Betrayed Me
4Chapter 3 - The Weight of My Father’s Coat
5Chapter 4 - The Dance I Was Not Invited To
Show all chaptersShow less
6Chapter 5 - The Hand That Trembled
7Chapter 6 - The Poem I Cannot Send
8Chapter 7 - The Glass That Reflected Nothing
9Chapter 8 - The Lie That Saved Me Once
10Chapter 9 - The Accounts of a Broken Year
11Chapter 10 - The Letter I Should Have Burned
12Chapter 11 - The Price of Honesty
13Chapter 12 - The Hour I Chose the Fire
14Chapter 13 - The Bonfire That Dared Us
15Chapter 14 - The Debt That Could Not Be Hidden
16Chapter 15 - The Strategy of a Broken Heir
17Chapter 16 - The Minuet That Cost Me My Mask
18Chapter 17 - The Offer I Could Not Accept
19Chapter 18 - The Name That Was Whispered
20Chapter 19 - The Room Where Everything Broke
21Chapter 20 - The Village That Knew Too Much
22Chapter 21 - The Sheriff at the Gate
23Chapter 22 - The Price of a Happy Ending
24Chapter 23 - The Life We Built on Ruins
25About the Author
26The End
27About the Author
28Also by Paige Sinclair
29Acknowledgements
30A Note from the Author
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