“Molly Fieldmore is starving to death, and she is being terribly polite about it.”

For nearly a year now, she has been quietly giving her food to her invalid mother. She mends shirts for threepence apiece. She smiles at the neighbours who pretend not to notice how thin her wrists have become. And every single morning, she tells herself she is perfectly fine, until one grey November afternoon, on a muddy lane three miles from home, her body finally decides it has had enough.

The man who finds her in the road is the last person in Hertfordshire she would have chosen.

Adrian, the Duke of Thornfield, has not spoken a kind word to anyone in ten years. He doesn’t entertain. He doesn’t visit. He certainly doesn’t rescue chattering young women who wake up in his guest chamber and tell him his eyes look like weather. But Molly Fieldmore weighs nothing in his arms, and her quiet bravery, the smile she offers from the mud, the apology she makes for the inconvenience of fainting, lodges itself somewhere behind his ribs and refuses to leave.

He cannot stop riding past her cottage.

He cannot stop hiding medicines beneath the cheese in her hampers, because she is too proud to accept them any other way. He cannot stop, and he doesn’t entirely understand why, until a sharp-eyed aunt and a meddlesome housekeeper arrange for Molly to spend her days at Thornfield, and Adrian discovers that the silence he has hidden inside for a decade is no match for a girl who fills it with stories about wallpaper birds and opinions on local cheese.

Then there is Sir Gerald Pomeroy. The neighbour who calls himself a benefactor. The man whose patience is running out.

The silent duke is going to have to find his voice at last.

Before the world Molly has been holding together by sheer willpower finally falls apart.

A tender, slow-burn clean Regency romance featuring a silent grumpy duke, a starving sunshine heroine, hurt/comfort, found family, a meddling aunt, a fierce housekeeper, and a love that says everything important without ever quite saying it out loud.

No cheating, no cliffhangers, and a beautifully satisfying happily ever after full of romance.

Also available with Kindle Unlimited!