Author Description

"In the spring of 1840, 18-year-old Jessica Blair is a scullery maid in a remote manner house - part of the vast holdings of the Duke of Fornay. Two years younger than Queen Victoria, Jessica is the well-educated daughter of a deceased professor. She is left to support widowed mother and to try to avoid an unacceptable marriage prospect. Jessica has secretly collected a flock of cast-off hens, and is supplementing her income hoping to improve her future. Jessica is alarmed one night when horsemen race headlong through the twilight on the footpath she has inadvertently cut to the henhouse. She stops the charge, just short of disaster, to find the threat is not many horses, but one magnificent, riderless runaway. Ignorant to the dangers in handling an overwrought stallion, Jessica calms the animal. She calls him "Sweetness." Backtracking, Jessica finds the missing rider, twenty-eight-year-old Devlin Miracle, the arrogant Twelfth Duke of Fornay - badly injured, and waiting for daylight. But, for this aristocrat, there will be no daylight. His injuries have left him blind. Struggling against their disparities, Devlin and Jessica resist, but sometimes love will not be ignored."--Page 4 of cover.