A Lord’s Unspoken Promise (Preview)

Chapter One

January 1819, Hampshire, Reverton Hills, England

It was easy enough for Violet to forget how lonely she was when she had a book in hand. As it was, there were no such obstacles standing between the woman and her loneliness now. In fact, there was nothing standing between her and the whole world.

She stood at the very top of the knoll behind her father’s manor on that dreary January morning, looking out over the southern stretch of Hampshire. The view extending as far as Southampton and also to the sea. The port town was shrouded in mist in a dizzyingly defusing the light. The sky and sea a whirl of blue beyond that, like something the eccentric Turner might have designed in his dreams. 

But back to the books. Before her mother had tasked her with travelling into Fair Oak that morning, on an errand unsuitable for a delicate flower like Violet, she had just turned the last page of Madame de La Fayette’s La Princesse de Clèves after three weeks of careful study. For weeks, her dreams had been plagued by the dashing Duke de Nemours. Plagued indeed, because it made Violet feel sick knowing that no man in the real world could ever compare to the French duke so penned by La Fayette. 

She toed the ground with the tip of her boot, crushing the season’s last drop of snow. Perhaps it was better that way. It would be impossible to resist a man as dashing and roguish as the fictitious Nemours, though it was unlikely he would glance twice in Violet’s direction. But yes, it would be impossible to resist falling in love, and that could not come to pass, because nothing would stand in the way of Violet and her dreams. 

It was unconventional for a woman to dream of being a writer; she knew. Women novelists exist. Violet loved them, but they wrote mostly in anonymity. Violet wanted to be known, and despite what her mother said, she would make that happen. 

The wind picked up and wreathed around her, giving a shiver. Violet tightened her redingote and pulled down her bonnet. She glanced down the thoroughfare between Fair Oak and Reverton Hills, gauging the distance between her spot atop the upland and home. 

To her surprise, the way was not clear. Climbing the path was Andrew,  watching his feet as he walked. He was sporting a topper and tattered greatcoat, looking less like the son of a baron, even less like the duke of her dreams, and more like the men who took care of the pigs at Reverton Farm.

“Why, I thought that was you,” Andrew said on his approach. “I thought, my Violet, all alone on a cold day like this? It could not be. Yet here you are!”

“Here I am.” Violet gave a little shrug of her shoulders. “A less amiable woman might think you had followed her from the village and give you a proper whacking. Better yet, fetch the constable.” She glanced at his haversack. “Have you taken up with the Post?”

“Of a sort.” 

Without asking, Andrew slipped the basket off her arm. There was no need for chivalry as it was empty, but Violet appreciated the gesture all the same. Andrew motioned for them to continue their walk together, smiling in that effortless, provincial way of his. 

“I’m returning some books to your father. I ravaged his library last Sunday for something suitable to read, remember? Perhaps you do not remember. You were too busy flirting with that cad Graham Milton, after all.”

Violet guffawed, sidling up beside him. “To my recollection, I was flirting with no one. Mr Milton accosted me devilishly quick after luncheon, and I could not secure my egress with Mother watching. I feel sorry for the woman who finds herself in the terrible position of becoming his wife. Between his spittle and his war stories, I felt as though I was fighting for my life.”

“He should like you to be his wife, spittle and war stories aside.”

“And I should like to sprout wings and fly away, but that does not mean it will happen.” She thought but did not add, There is more chance of my sprouting wings than marrying any of the men in Hampshire, that is a fact. 

Violet did not consider herself a prize, so there was no explaining the interest she garnered from neighbouring bachelors. Marriageable women must have been in short supply in Hampshire, that was all. Many a country gentleman was lining up to call on Violet and her sister. Though Rose welcomed it with considerably less interest than Violet. That was the way of things, of course. It had no bearing on the quality of their persons: the eldest sister married before the younger, even if the younger was the only party inclined to marry, as was the case with the Steele sisters.

Andrew regarded Violet curiously, elbowing her in the side. “You’ve gone off again to that little place of yours. What were you thinking?”

“Nothing at all.”

“You’re an effortless liar, Violet. It’s a good thing you’re charming. Father says one can forgive a woman of anything if she is charming. Now tell me what you were doing in Fair Oak honestly, or I shall leave you to walk home alone.”

Violet fought a smile. She had known Andrew for most of her life, their fathers having been lifelong friends, their estates bordering one another. For the most part, Andrew could read her like a book, always knowing what to say and when to say it to get his own way, mostly in good spirit. 

He was handsome in a way that was obvious to most women of the county, not really obvious to Violet. Andrew looked too much like his father, with his fine fair hair and muddy green eyes, with his nose that arced ever so slightly at the bridge, and a chin that drew too far inward to her taste. Thankfully, he had inherited none of the baron’s ways, save for his sense of duty, which was the thing Violet liked least about him. 

Goodfellow, Andrew. Always doing what is right.

“Mother asked that I deliver some medicine and sundries to Mrs. Hayes in the village. She laboured for three days before delivering her baby early this morning. Really, it was the least we could do to deliver some bread rolls and laudanum, considering she almost died.”

“Who’s working for the Post now?” Andrew laughed. “I jest, but why send you? You’re hardly a midwife. You’ve no real connection to any of the families in Fair Oak, unless…”

Violet felt her face grow hot. She slowed her gait and composed herself, hoping silence would suffice as an answer. The truth was too terrible to say aloud, not that it mattered. Because Andrew could read her like a book.

“Egad! Lady Reverton was showing you off to the villagers, wasn’t she?” Andrew stated more than asked. “Using acts of charity to lure in potential suitors! And you went along with it?”

His laughing was doing nothing to help Violet’s embarrassment. She ripped the basket off his arm and stormed down the path so quickly she was almost running. But soon she found herself smiling.

“She wore down my defences!” Violet cried over her shoulder. “She went on and on until I fetched my coat! She wouldn’t leave me alone!”

Andrew was hot on her tail, taunting her between bouts of laughter. The exercise made Violet feel like a child; she was not a woman of twenty in that moment but a girl of eight, running around Reverton in ruffled pinafores with her siblings, with Andrew and his siblings, in those halcyon days before they all went their own ways, marrying and becoming officers, and doing the thousand other things that made Violet feel as though life was passing by too quickly.

A hand grabbed her shoulder and yanked her back. With a gasp, Violet stopped, having just reached the gate between Reverton Hills and the manor grounds. She turned in a circle, catching her breath and laughing. Andrew was beaming down at her, positioned somewhat like the sun.

“I won,” Violet said teasingly, ticking her head from side to side like a pendulum. “I beat you.”

Andrew didn’t tease her in kind. Instead, he regarded her seriously and his smile began to falter. When he said nothing, Violet began to worry. In an instant, all the joy had died in his eyes. Violet hadn’t the faintest idea why. 

“You did,” Andrew murmured at last, his neck bobbing.

Slowly, he reached around to lift the latch on the gate. His body pressed against hers, and Violet averted her eyes. She awkwardly padded for the gate behind her and it yawned open after that.

She stepped back, waiting for Andrew to follow her.

“Are you coming to the manor?”

He hesitated, glancing behind him. 

“Yes,” he replied. “Yes, I suppose I must.”

***

The next morning, Violet awoke to the news that Andrew had asked for her hand in marriage.

It had all happened so quickly. It began with her mother begging Andrew to stay for dinner. He agreed, and after dinner, we all played charades. Violet had noticed he was acting strangely, but thought he was focused on the game, so thought nothing more of it. Then Andrew and her father had slipped into the study once the girls had made known their desire to retire for good; and then…

“And then your father told Mr Vance that he had to consult with you before he gave his blessing, which is why I have come to sway you to my side before you both make a decision you will regret for all time.”

Violet glanced up at her mother, who was sitting on the side of her bed looking like butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth. She shuffled closer, placing her hand atop her daughter’s. Her hair was practically ethereal in that early morning light, unbelievably blonde despite her near forty years of age. Almost everything about her mother was unbelievable: her youthful beauty, her list of accomplishments, her knack for making friends, but most of all, her audacity.

“Come now, darling. Let us see this as a gift, for that is what it is! There are few men you tolerate more than Mr Vance. Three Seasons you have enjoyed in London, and three years we have spent agonising over a match for you. Yes, let us see the gift for what it is and see other things for what they are as well. The London gentlemen do not fancy you, and you do not fancy them, little bird. Therefore, a match must be made for you. A woman needs a husband, Violet. I am sorry, but that is the truth. If there will be no one else for you, why not Mr Vance?” 

Lady Reverton may have said something more, but Violet didn’t hear it. She was too busy trying not to burst into tears from the shock of Andrew’s proposal and the bite of her mother’s home truths. 

A knock rapped on the door; a nervous cadence specific to Rose. Her sister did not wait for permission before entering.

“Is it true?” she asked.

“Rose…” Violet leaned forward on the bed. “Who told you?” 

Her heart panged at the sight of her sister. She wore a pretty cotton dress and yellow ribbons in her blonde hair, and an expression that told Violet that she was grief stricken over the news.

Leaving home was an inevitability for young women like Violet. Fledglings who did not so much as fly from the nest as fall from it, leaving other little birds behind. Rose was not like other debutantes. Despite her beauty, she did not take to London. It was even worse than Violet. She was crippled by shyness and expectation. Violet had been her shield against all the barbarity of the modern world.

How could she continue to protect Rose if she married? More than that, how could Violet continue to protect herself?

“Father told me,” Rose breathed. “He had just poured the tea at breakfast, and then—Oh, but it is true, isn’t it? Mr Andrew wishes to marry you.”

“’Wishes’ and ‘feels he is forced to’ are very different things,” Violet rebuked, thumbing the hem of her quilt.

“You must not say such things, Violet, such negative and incensing things,” Lady Reverton interjected softly. She looked at her girls. “Mr Vance does not deserve your prejudice. He has done a kind thing asking for your hand, a charitable thing; for you and for this family. I do believe it would crush him if you were to reject the betrothal. He has such a kind heart.”

“Are you suggesting I accept his offer to avoid hurting his feelings? What of my feelings? Andrew is a friend—nothing more.”

Her mother was silent for a long while. 

“Would it not be simpler to say yes? Oh, darling! Please try to see things as I do! There is no better sustenance for a woman than companionship. You will wither away if left to your own devices. Please, oh please, consider Mr Vance!”

Violet slipped out of the bed. Her well-loved copy of La Princesse de Clèves fell out of the coverings and onto the floor. She didn’t bother to pick it up, moving to wrap herself in her dressing gown. 

“Please, let us not fight,” Lady Reverton continued, bending over to pick up Violet’s book. “I shall give you the time you need to make up your mind, but this is not a decision you can make alone, Violet. Your father is leaving for London in a day, and already you have decided to join him for the Season. We have granted you some freedom, but our tolerance is not without end. Mr Vance is presenting you with a good life. You need only reach out and take it.”

Violet turned to find a familiar look in her mother’s eye. She was smiling, but that was only a mask. Behind it, Violet could see the truth she had known for much longer than she should have: that her mother thought she was a lost cause, and that her worry was eating away at her. 

“I have a good life,” Violet murmured, refusing to fuel that look any more than necessary. “I’ve no need for a man to grant me another.”

In punishing silence, her mother rose to her feet. She moved languidly to the door, the hem of her white day dress skimming the floor. She paused to wipe a tear from Rose’s cheek in the doorway before leaving. 

The door closed behind her. 

Suddenly, Violet crumbled under the weight of her circumstance. She buckled forward but held steady for Rose, clutching her arms over her chest as she tried desperately to digest the consequences of Andrew’s proposal.

 “Violet…” Rose took a step forward. “Speak with me, please.”

“I don’t love him.” Violet stared into the quickly dying fire, musing aloud before she could stop herself. “That’s all that matters, isn’t it? Regardless of what Mother says, I don’t love Andrew, so I cannot marry him. Father knows this, and that is why he said he would consult with me first, and before Mother could try to convince me otherwise.”

A chill ran through her.

“Why would he even ask?” she continued. “We have been friends our entire lives, with not a spark between us. There is no longing in his eye when he looks at me, no tenderness that is not fraternal. Really, the last thing I want is to marry Andrew and be stuck here forever. He knows me well enough to know that.”

“Mama would like it,” Rose murmured. “Papa would like it too. He says Mr Vance would be perfect for you.”

“What about what I would like? And—” Her voice broke. “And Andrew? He does not want to be saddled with me, not when I would be eternally unsatisfied as his wife. What life would that be for us? Oh, I dream of so much more!” 

Despite herself, tears welled in Violet’s eyes. Rose must have noticed, because she darted forward and wrapped her arms around her sister, squeezing her tight. Soon, Rose was sobbing too. Violet patted her hair, knowing she did not deserve her sister’s tears. 

Violet didn’t want to marry anyone, least of all Andrew. But every minute she spent resisting her fate was one minute more that Rose waited on the shelf for her time to come.

“Andrew does not want to marry me. Someone has tricked him into believing that he does. One of us must be sensible in this, and it must be me.” Violet took a steadying breath. “It seems I have no other choice.”

Rose drew back from Violet, her eyes rimmed red with tears. “No other choice? Violet, I don’t understand.”

Violet cupped her sister’s face, forcing a reassuring smile. 

“Hasten to finish your breakfast, my budding Rose. Finish it and hurry back up. I shall need your help to pack.”

Chapter Two 

A few days earlier, Venice, Italy

“Come back to bed, signore. It is so lonely without you.”

Rhys glanced over his shoulder at his guest. The covers had wrapped around her form in their lovemaking, concealing the curves he had hastened to discover after their lunch in her father’s empty palazzo. The Bella Donna looked up at him sleepily beneath her thick dark lashes. From what he had gathered, she was the daughter of one of the largest art collectors in the city, a patron of some sort. There was a good chance that was not the case; however, he may have misunderstood.  

After spending a year in Italy, Rhys still couldn’t string a sentence together in Italian.

Rhys dismissed her with a smile, returning to his post on the windowsill. He breathed in the heady Venetian air, relishing the feel of the breeze as it snaked over his forearms and chest. His shirt hung open loosely, shifting gently in the wind. Kissed by that bright winter sun and feeling the full effect of his heavy lunch, he struggled to stay awake. 

The window in the uppermost room of his apartment looked out over the canal, another row of colourful houses crammed together on the opposite side, guaranteeing a steady trickle of entertainment throughout the day. Rhys most enjoyed when the touring British lords and ladies rode beneath his window, loudly criticising the culture and thinking no one could understand them.

It was a good reminder of what Rhys had escaped with the ton. He needed to be reminded, lest he start thinking about missing home. As it was, there were only locals in the gondolas that morning, speaking Italian that was too quick for him to understand, pointing at the walkway up ahead, and tapestries that hung out of nearby windows to air.

There was no sweeter place on earth, Rhys thought, especially because I am alone here and can do as I please.

“You have no wife? No figlio?” Antonina had asked him earlier that morning at the palazzo. “Una disgrazia…” she had added with sad eyes.

“It is not a tragedy,” Rhys had replied, leisurely imbibing his wine. “Some men do not long for families, and I am one of them. Look around us, bella. Why marry when I can take the world to wife? When I can have all of this?”

She had tried to argue his point, but he had closed their debate with a kiss.

A knock sounded suddenly on the door downstairs, and Rhys almost fell out the window. He caught himself on the window frame and whistled to his guest. Antonina rolled out of bed with a groan.

“Erm, scusi,” he offered, picking up her effects, “time to go.” He helped her dress quickly and straightened himself up, explaining to the best of his ability that he would run for his life if that was her father come to kill him. 

With a glance at his pocket watch, twelve o’clock on the dot, he opened the front door. His lover slipped out immediately and left, pushing past the gentleman who had come knocking. 

Rhys’s visitor was not her father. It wasn’t any man he recognised. He knew without asking, however, that the man was not Italian.

“Apologies, my lord.” No, the man was indeed a Londoner dressed in Venetian cloth; a wolf in sheep’s clothing. “You are the Marquess of Blackburn, are you not?” He said.

He hadn’t heard that name in a while. Rhys closed the door an inch. 

“Who are you, and what do you want?”

 “I’m from the embassy, my lord. A letter has arrived for you.” The man smoothed back what remained of his hair and reached into his pocket. He pulled out a sealed envelope. 

The red wax seal was the unmistakable mark of Rhys’s father.

Rhys took the letter between his pointer and index fingers, nodding his thanks and closing the door in the messenger’s face. He slumped back against the wood, and the letter crumpled in his hands.

“What more can you want from me?” he asked, smoothing out the envelope.

The kitchen was a mess, and the worktop was littered with the remnants of his breakfast. Rhys pushed the rest of a two-day-old ciabatta aside and set the letter on the countertop. 

He couldn’t bring himself to open it. His father never wrote out of frivolity.

Rhys checked his watch again: fifteen minutes had passed. A butter knife found its way into his hands and he tore open the seal. 

As he read his father’s missive, thunderstruck by what he found, a few British tourists sailed past his window, loudly vaunting the beauties of England.

***

Fish and smoke. 

London always smelled of fish and smoke. 

The heel of Rhys’s hessians clicked wetly against the pavement. He glanced up at the stately Mayfair Manor before him, at the heavy grey clouds beyond that, alighting the coach that had driven him from Dover to London with about as much zeal as a man headed for the gallows. 

A drop of rain fell on his nose, and Rhys gave an involuntary grumble. The heavens burst open as if to taunt him, and he turned to help the postillion with his trunks in the frigid pouring rain. 

By the time the door to his father’s home opened, his overcoat had soaked through. He shook the butler’s hand as though greeting an old friend, giving his coat to a footman and suggesting he wring it out. These were the first friendly faces Rhys had seen since departing Venice.  

It almost felt good to be home. Almost, but not quite.

“You certainly know how to make an entrance. Three days late, tut-tut. I thought you’d been thrown overboard crossing the Channel.”

Rhys turned to the double staircase, taken aback by the way his cousin’s voice echoed in the hall. Jackson stood on the landing, lording over the entrance hall, and considerably better dressed and dryer than Rhys. He hadn’t changed a day in the two years since last they had seen each other. He still had his pronounced brow and severe mouth that always made him look somewhat disapproving.

“Thought or dreamed?” Rhys crossed the hall to greet him, rolling up his damp sleeves. “Come now, crack a smile for me, Jack. Anyone would think you were sorry to see me.”

Jackson smiled, but it quickly faded. 

“Not sorry, though we both know what your visit means for us.”

Rhys swallowed the lump in his throat and looked up the staircase. “Is he in his sleeping chamber?”

Jackson began moving down the hall leading to the western wing. “We’ve moved him. It’s warmer down here in winter.” He slowed his gait. “If he makes it that far into the year, that is.”

“Well, don’t beat around the bush.” 

Rhys sighed. There were things that needed to be said before he saw his father, things only Jackson would understand. 

“If I had known how dire things were, you know I would not have left England at all.”

“Do I?” Jackson paused and glanced over his shoulder at Rhys. “Forgive me; that was uncalled for. Your father is about as apt at communicating as you are. It doesn’t surprise me that he attempted to downplay things for your benefit.”

Rhys didn’t contest his cousin’s point, though he knew that nothing his father did or did not tell him was to make Rhys feel any better. For as long as he could remember, they had treated each other like strangers. It wasn’t a lack of communication that poisoned their relationship, but a lack of connection. Rhys had long made his peace with it.

The cousins continued their walk in silence.

His father’s room was absurdly warm, and Rhys felt a sweat spring over his skin as soon as they entered. He rubbed his face as he approached his father’s bedside, each footstep sounding as loudly as his father’s laboured breaths. 

The duke had aged ten years in twenty-five months. His skin stretched awkwardly over his cheekbones and jowls, draping his face in a deathly shadow. His hair was whiter than Rhys remembered. Someone had gone to the trouble of shaving the duke that morning and had nicked his chin. 

That shallow cut made Rhys want to sink to his knees and cry for his dead mother, but he bottled the feeling with all the others that bothered him and corked them tight inside his chest. 

“Father, it’s me, I’ve returned.”

The duke’s eyes rolled beneath his thin eyelids, and then they flickered open. His expression didn’t change upon seeing his long-departed son, and Rhys wondered whether it was from shock or apathy. 

“Leave us.” The duke’s fingers lifted off his bed, and the room emptied immediately. Jackson followed the maids out, closing the door behind him. “Sit with me,” the duke ordered his son.

Rhys did as he was told, pulling up a chair from beneath the window. The room had once been his mother’s solar, locked in time since her death. The evidence of her existence had been stacked in the corner to make room for the duke’s cot and medicines. Her sewing chair, her prized Van Dyck piece, her collection of vases from the Orient all had been pushed to the side.

“I would ask how you’ve been, but Jackson more than covered it. Your letter, on the other hand…” Rhys pinched his trousers above the knee and lowered into his seat. “Why not tell me to return sooner? I made certain to inform the house where I was at all times.”

His father averted his eyes to the window. The rain had yet to abate. Rhys knew he found it soothing. 

“Is it so unbelievable that I did not want to interrupt your sojourn?”

“Sojourn implies I intended to return. You know that was never my plan. Is that why you hid your—” Rhys cut himself off. “Is that why you said nothing until now, when it is too late?”

His father’s lips twisted in a smile. “You’ve already written me off, haven’t you? I’m not dead yet.”

“Of course not. I can hardly claim to know what’s going on.” Despite himself, Rhys’s gaze drifted to his father’s pumping chest. He knew one thing: his father’s heart was failing and had been for years. “What has Doctor Philips said? Last I knew, he had thought to find some cure for you.”

“There is no cure for old age, Rhys.” Back to the rain he looked. “I called you back to England because I am going to die, and loath though you may be to hear it, you will inherent the duchy when I pass.”

Rhys scanned the room for an escape, but there was none. 

“Your return belies your disdain for the post.”

“My return has nothing to do with the dratted duchy. I don’t want it. I have always known it, always said it. I came back…” 

For you.

His father’s lip quivered; a tick of his age, or so Rhys thought. 

“Give it to Jackson.”

“Jackson is not my son,” his father declared, with a look that told Rhys, You cannot have your cake and eat it too. “Nothing needs to change.”

“Everything will change when you are gone.”

“You can return to the Continent—”

“And have Jackson act as the de facto duke in my stead? Why bother with that? That is why I said give it to him. Give it to him and be done with it.” Rhys slumped back in his seat, twiddling his thumbs. He stopped when he realised his father did the same thing when he was nervous. “Must we speak of this now? There will be time for it on the morrow and the day after that.” He leaned forward, elbows on the bed. “Let me read to you. Better yet, let me tell you all I have seen in my travels.”

His father laughed under his breath disparagingly. It fixed Rhys to the spot, making him feel like a child in the schoolroom. He had said the wrong thing.

“Tell me not what you have seen but what you plan to do,” his father said. In an act of unusual tenderness, he grabbed Rhys’s hand. “I want you settled before my time is upon me. There will be no peaceful rest for me while you continue to wander this earth aimlessly. Why not a woman for you? Why not a family?”

Rhys tried to pull his hand away, but his father was steadfast. 

“The duchy does not concern me so much as your happiness, but I know they are one and the same. You are running away—”

“I’m sitting perfectly still.”

“Jackson, be sensible about this,” his father bit back. 

It took Rhys a moment to realise he had used the wrong name. 

“Rhys,” he corrected, staring straight into his father’s face.

He wanted to chalk the mistake up to his father’s age, but he knew better. In many ways, Jackson was the son his father deserved. He was newly married, with a child on the way. He had never left England and didn’t plan to. He had excelled at Eton and been studying under the Duke of Winthrope since he had learned how to read, while Rhys had floundered until Oxford, floundered all the way through that as well.

The rain came slower and softer against the windowpanes, uneasy sunlight zigzagging across the room. With it, his father sighed and nested his head in his pillow. 

“Tell me about Italy, then. I concede defeat.”

Rhys knew it was not defeat that had changed his father’s mind.

It was pity, for the son he knew was incapable of handling love and duty.

---

“A Lord’s Unspoken Promise” is an Amazon Best-Selling novel, check it out here!

Miss Violet Steele is a bookish wallflower, determined to defy societal expectations and become a writer. She therefore looks forward to a life of contented spinsterhood… until her childhood friend asks for her hand in marriage. Desperate to avoid this dreadful future, Violet agrees to a last season in London with the hopes of publishing her novel. That is when fate intervenes in the form of the mysterious Marquess of Blackburn, who intrigues her as much as he infuriates her.

Will she allow herself to open up her heart and eventually believe in true love?

As the sole heir to a duchy, Rhys Huxley has spent a lifetime eschewing his duty. When his estranged father’s health begins to fail though, Rhys needs to respect his last wish about securing their succession. Determined to not let this define his future, Rhys devises a scheme to fake a betrothal. Searching high and low for a woman to fit the bill, he crosses paths with Violet, a familiar bluestocking, who not only is everything he is looking for, but even more than he could ever imagine.

As absurd as it seems to him, he may have actually found the one who truly talks to his soul…

When their arrangement takes on a life of its own, Violet and Rhys must reconsider everything they know about love and duty. As the lines of their deception and their real feelings begin to blur, will their growing affection turn into a true love? Or will internal battles and threatening forces overpower their newly formed bond?

“A Lord’s Unspoken Promise” is a historical romance novel of approximately 80,000 words. No cheating, no cliffhangers, and a guaranteed happily ever after.

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