The Tenant of Thornton Mill

Kent, 1855.

For twenty years, Clara Cartwright has lived a quiet life beneath the careful protection of the only parents she has ever known. She knows she was found as an infant on a bitter, rain-soaked night. She knows nothing of the woman who gave birth to her, why she was abandoned, or why the people who love her most seem determined to leave the past undisturbed.

And she has learned not to ask.

But at twenty, Clara wants a life that belongs to her.

When she takes a position at Thornton Mill, she expects long hours, ink-stained fingers, and the simple freedom of earning her own place in the world.

She does not expect Lord Edward Thornton.

Young, handsome, and newly burdened with an inheritance he never expected, Edward belongs to a world far beyond Clara's reach. He is her employer, a gentleman, and precisely the sort of man she has no business thinking about after she leaves the mill.

But distance proves difficult when neither of them seems particularly interested in keeping it.

As stolen conversations become lingering glances, and lingering glances become something far more dangerous, Clara finds herself drawn not only to Edward-but deeper into Thornton Mill itself.

Because the mill is keeping something from her.

A familiar crest. A name her mother refuses to speak. Old records that should mean nothing to her-and paper that somehow does.

The closer Clara grows to Edward, the deeper she ventures into a history preserved in ledgers, correspondence, and forgotten records, where ink has faded but secrets have not.

Someone knows why Clara was abandoned.

Someone has spent twenty years making certain she never discovers it.

And somewhere between the man she is beginning to love and the mill that bears his name lies the truth of who Clara Cartwright really is.

Thornton Mill has kept its secrets for twenty years.

Clara is about to start asking questions.