In a Lavender Daze

Is it a cruel twist of fate… or second chance at happiness?

More than a decade ago, Miss Lydia Whitby was the belle of every assembly room — admired, accomplished, and betrothed to the devastatingly handsome Lord Oliver Hartwell. Then her father died, his debts and misdeeds came to light, and Lydia did the only honorable thing she could imagine: she vanished. Reinventing herself under her mother’s maiden name, she has spent the years since as Miss Lydia Mercer, a governess of impeccable reputation, determined that scandal and heartbreak remain firmly in the past.

Oliver Hartwell survived the disappearance of his fiancée only to find himself bound in a dutiful, joyless marriage that secured his estate and very little else. Now widowed and father to a spirited young daughter, he is resolved to provide stability and kindness in his household — beginning with the selection of a suitable governess. He is wholly unprepared when the woman who enters his study is the fiancée who vanished without a word, leaving behind questions he has never stopped asking.

Against her better judgment, Lydia remains at Hartshorne House, caring for a child who, had life taken a kinder course, might have been her own. At every turn she and Oliver find themselves thrown together, and the spark that once bound them proves far from extinguished. Indeed, it threatens to blaze into something neither prudence nor pride can contain — and this time, walking away may prove impossible.