Emma V. Leech

A workhouse boy. A duke’s daughter. One impossible love.
A Tender, Transformative Victorian romance from Best Selling Novellist Emma V Leech. A workhouse boy turned master gardener, a duke’s daughter trapped in sorrow, and the love that grows between them like sunlight breaking through clouds.
Hartley De Beauvoir has spent his life running from the shadows of the workhouse. Adopted at six by Minerva and Inigo De Beauvoir, he has devoted every breath to becoming worthy of the name they gave him. Now the owner of the thriving De Beauvoir Nurseries and Landscaping, Hart is on the cusp of greatness.

When the Duke of Beresford commissions him to redesign the gardens at Hardacre Hall, Hart knows this is the opportunity of a lifetime.

Nothing — and no one — must distract him.

Then Lady Fidelia Ponsonby walks through the gardens.

Beautiful, untouchable, and wrapped in a sorrow she cannot seem to shake, Fidelia drifts through the grounds like a ghost. Hart tells himself to ignore her. She is a duke’s daughter. He is a workhouse bastard with dirt under his nails and ambition in his blood.

But every day, he watches her.
And every day, his heart aches a little more.

Fidelia has been betrayed once before — cruelly, publicly, and by a man she trusted. Her world has shrunk to silence and shadows, until a gruff, plain‑speaking landscape designer rescues her from an accident that nearly claims her life. Hart breaks the spell of melancholy that has held her captive for so long, awakening hope she thought she’d lost forever.

But hope is dangerous.

Hart knows there can be no future between them. The gulf between their worlds is too wide, too unforgiving. Yet when Fidelia turns to him — for comfort, for safety, for the simple kindness no one else seems willing to offer — he cannot walk away. Protecting her may cost him everything he has worked for.

Losing her would cost him far more.

In the end, Hart may have to sacrifice his dreams, his reputation, even his heart to save the woman he loves.

Some sacrifices are unbearable.
Others are as natural as breathing.
Because sometimes love doesn’t just grow.
It transforms.