A spinster who writes stories. A war hero who grows roses behind a wall. A storm that throws them together.
Anastasia Hartford is twenty-nine, unmarried, and pretends to not be upset about this. Orphaned by influenza and harbouring a secret that would see her deemed worthless by polite society, she has built a careful life: a cottage, a beloved companion in Lucy, and a desk full of stories she dreams of publishing yet dreads exposing to the world.
Captain Jack Clifton came home from the Peninsular War a decorated hero and a shattered man. He tends his roses behind a wall of hedges, flinches at thunder, and has barely spoken in three years. He wants nothing from anyone, least of all the woman whose pages the wind flings at his feet one stormy afternoon.
When the wind scatters her pages into his hands, he discovers in her words an understanding he believed impossible. She discovers in his eyes a depth of feeling she had ceased to hope for. But their fragile connection faces a brother bent on Jack's ruin, a village quick to judge, and a revelation that could change their place in the world entirely.
