With All My Heart, J. -WIP-PAUSE

A love story born in ink... and ruined by a single mistaken letter.

When Lord Alexander Aveline, second son of the Duke of Brenleigh, leaves for war on the Peninsula, it is Josephine, quiet, dutiful, and often overlooked, who promises to write to him.

When her mother reminds her that it is not proper for an unmarried young lady to sign her full name to a gentleman, Josephine obeys. Each letter she sends bears only a single initial.

J.

She believes he knows it is her.
He believes the letters come from her beautiful elder sister.

Across three long years of war, their correspondence deepens into something neither expected. Confidences are shared. Dreams are spoken. Slowly, two hearts begin to fall in love, each certain the other has returned their affection.

When duty calls him home, Alexander returns to England holding fast to the letters that carried him through the war, certain the woman he has loved across those pages loves him in return.

But a well-meaning arrangement leads to a devastating and very public misunderstanding. Each believed they were meeting the one who had loved them faithfully across war and distance. Neither realizes the terrible mistake until it is far too late.

Josephine finds herself married to a man who believes he has been deceived. He thinks the letters he cherished were written by another woman and cannot understand why the future he once dreamed of now lies beyond his reach.

Because he does not yet know the truth.

That the woman beside him is the one who loved him all along, faithfully, quietly, and with all her heart.

Content Warning: emotional cheating, verbal abuse, emotional manipulation, marital cruelty, emotional neglect, public humiliation, mistaken identity, and period-typical attitudes toward women.