The Girl in the Gate House by Julie Klassen
The Girl in the Gate House by Julie Klassen
Stand alone novel
Summary:
Captain Matthew Bryant, returning to England successful and wealthy after the Napoleonic wars, leases an impressive estate from a cash-poor nobleman, determined to show the society beauty who once rejected him what a colossal mistake she made. When he discovers an old gatehouse on the property, he is immediately intrigued by its striking young inhabitant and sets out to uncover her identity, and her past. But the more he learns about her, the more he realizes he must distance himself. Falling in love with an outcast would ruin his well-laid plans.
The old gatehouse holds secrets of its own. Can Mariah and Captain Bryant uncover them before the cunning heir to the estate buries them forever?
Opening Lines:
The end of the only life I've known, thought Mariah Aubrey, looking back through the carriage window at the shrinking figures of her mother and sister. nineteen-year-old Julia stood in the foreground, shoulders heaving as she wept. The sight seared Mariah's heart. Their mother stood behind, hand on Julia's arm, in consolation, in empathy--perhaps even in restraint. And there came their father, down the steps of Attwood Park. He had not come out to bid her farewell. he would not, he insisted, "sanction vice, nor seek to lessen its disgrace." But now he draped one arm around his wife and the other around his younger daughter, turning and shepherding them back inside, back into the only home Mariah had ever known. And might never see again.
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