The Ashcroft Affair (113K)

When Margaret Ashcroft sees the glint of triumph in her father’s eye, she knows her destiny is no longer her own. 

When Luc Allaire sees Margaret Ashcroft after three years apart, he knows his fate belongs entirely to her.

As the second daughter of a baronet and the likely bride-to-be for Baron Eastcott’s son, James, there is little control to be found in Margaret’s gilded cage but the near-impropriety of tending to her garden. In the spring of 1712, a seemingly isolated act of violence not only threatens her carefully curated self-worth and reputation, but reintroduces her to the Bertrands, a middle class family whose children and French-born ward, Luc, were once her companions. 

As Margaret navigates the unwanted but unavoidable courtship of James Eastcott, she encounters a series of mysterious financial transactions and evidence of closed-door exchanges. Luc, drawn in by proof of his adoptive father’s involvement, joins Margaret as she inevitably unearths a scandal of inheritance fraud that not only entwines but implicates all three families. 

The idyllic facade of her reality crumbling with each reveal, Margaret reclaims what little she can of her agency through the riskiest indulgence of all: falling in love.