The Marquess Breaks Like Dawn
(2027)(The third book in the Thorns & Temptations series)
A novel by Arabella Kent
Alistair Thorne, Marquess of Waverly, has spent nine years pretending.
He pretends to be charming. He pretends to be careless. He pretends the women, whisky, and late nights prove he is whole. The truth is uglier. A Belgian farmhouse took part of him, and he has never got it back.
His father demands an heir. London demands a scandal. Alistair gives them what they expect. Then he locks his bedroom door every night.
Daphne Wells does not pretend.
At fifteen, her father beat obedience into her and called it discipline. Daphne left home with blood on her shift and never looked back. She built a business. She built a name. She owes nothing to the family that marked her.
But her brother is dying.
So she goes back.
She does not expect to find a marquess cutting a road through the land behind her brother’s cottage. She does not expect to hate him this much. She certainly does not expect one catastrophic evening to leave them married, compromised, and unable to tell anyone what really happened.
He cannot touch her the way a husband should.
She will not tell him why she flinches when a hand moves too fast.
They circle each other in a house full of locked doors and unasked questions. Then Daphne finds him shaking in the dark. Then Alistair sees the scars she keeps hidden beneath her dress. The silence between them finally becomes too much to carry.
He is not the rake London thinks he is.
She is not the cold woman her family made her.
And the marriage forced on them may be the first safe place either of them has ever known.
Genre: Historical Romance
He pretends to be charming. He pretends to be careless. He pretends the women, whisky, and late nights prove he is whole. The truth is uglier. A Belgian farmhouse took part of him, and he has never got it back.
His father demands an heir. London demands a scandal. Alistair gives them what they expect. Then he locks his bedroom door every night.
Daphne Wells does not pretend.
At fifteen, her father beat obedience into her and called it discipline. Daphne left home with blood on her shift and never looked back. She built a business. She built a name. She owes nothing to the family that marked her.
But her brother is dying.
So she goes back.
She does not expect to find a marquess cutting a road through the land behind her brother’s cottage. She does not expect to hate him this much. She certainly does not expect one catastrophic evening to leave them married, compromised, and unable to tell anyone what really happened.
He cannot touch her the way a husband should.
She will not tell him why she flinches when a hand moves too fast.
They circle each other in a house full of locked doors and unasked questions. Then Daphne finds him shaking in the dark. Then Alistair sees the scars she keeps hidden beneath her dress. The silence between them finally becomes too much to carry.
He is not the rake London thinks he is.
She is not the cold woman her family made her.
And the marriage forced on them may be the first safe place either of them has ever known.
Genre: Historical Romance