Emma V. Leech

Pride built his walls. Desire tears them down. A marriage forged in fire.
A Darkly Tender Victorian romance from Best Selling Author Emma V Leech
Lady Catherine Barrington has never been afraid of wanting things or of going after them. Impetuous, charming, and utterly unstoppable, Cat set her sights on Ciarán St. Just, Marquess of Kilbane, the ton’s most infamous rake.

Marrying him was daring.
Falling in love with him was disastrous.

Kilbane has no intention of being her husband in anything but name. His reputation is a carefully crafted shield, the hell‑born libertine, the man whispered about in drawing rooms, the St. Just heir whose bloodline is tainted with madness. Anyone who believes he can be saved is a fool.

Especially his little fool of a wife.

Cat’s heart is bruised, but not broken. When scandal erupts after Kilbane flees to France, she refuses to crumble. She is her father’s daughter — stubborn, loyal, and determined to see the man beneath the armour. So she writes to him. Letter after letter, pouring out her fierce, hopeful heart, praying he might read even one.

Then illness strikes.

A vulnerable, fevered Kilbane finds his wife at his bedside, the woman he tried to cast aside, the woman whose letters reveal a brilliant, brave, maddeningly irresistible soul. For the first time, he sees Cat not as a mistake… but as the one person who has ever truly seen him.

But pride is a fortress, and Kilbane has spent a lifetime building his walls high.

Cat has only her courage, her love, and her relentless belief that the man she married is worth fighting for.

To claim each other, they must tear down everything that stands between them, fear, shame, desire, and the ghosts of Kilbane’s past.

It will take daring.
It will take desire.
And it will take two stubborn hearts choosing each other at last.