Speak. on hold until summer :/

Speak.

The main rule of a maid: you are a ghost, you must never be seen. Speak only when spoken to and in hushed, short words. Madeleine has lived a life of silence. Born from a line of parlor maids, she has been drilled on the ins and outs of service and has never had a voice of her own. After a humiliating accident, she is thrown out the back door with no hopes of a future. Two years of street begging and grime later, she is accepted into a desperate family who’s on the brink of bankruptcy and need a cheap, but well trained maid to impress possible in-laws of their troublesome son, Harry. The only problem is that Harry will do anything to keep Madeleine from being successful at her job.

Harry has never understood the life of aristocracy; all parties and lessons on dos and don’ts. He has never been able to voice his true thoughts and longs for a way to express himself. As soon as he turns 21, his parents immediately start looking for his future bride to improve their financial status. However, Harry aspires to become an author and never marry. This prompts him into a spree of ruined dinner parties, tea times and many lost maids. When his parents desperately hire a disgraced parlor maid and make her over in one last final attempt to marry their son off, Harry will go to all lengths to make sure they fail. But what happens when he starts to worry what happens to the poor girl after she is thrown into the streets once more? When her long, golden locks turn black from coal dust, her delicate face once more marked with hollowed cheeks from hunger? It seems Harry must pick between his happiness and Madeleine’s.