Emma V. Leech

Love grows where trust begins. Two wounded hearts learning to hope again.
A rich, brooding, tender, and beautifully grown‑up Victorian Romance from novellist Emma V Leech
Viscount Lyall Anderson has always known the oldest trick in the book: a beautiful woman can ruin a man before he even realises he’s in danger. When he begins a passionate affair with Miss Lilith Fulbright, he believes he’s merely indulging in pleasure.

Until her parents catch them in a compromising embrace.

Humiliated, furious, and painfully aware that Lilith wants only his title and wealth, Lyall does the honourable thing and marries her — knowing full well he’s condemning himself to misery.

But Lilith has one final betrayal left.

When she runs off with another man and meets a tragic end in a shipwreck, Lyall expects to be free at last. Instead, he discovers she has named him guardian to her cousin Luella and her twelve‑year‑old brother, Jack. Given the Fulbright family’s reputation for fraud and manipulation, Lyall assumes this is yet another scheme.

He refuses to trust them an inch.

Luella Fulbright doesn’t blame him. Her late father was a scoundrel, and her cousin Lilith was worse. All she wants is her rightful inheritance so she can build a new life for herself and Jack — far from scandal, shame, and the shadow of their family name.

But Lyall is determined to follow the letter of his guardianship.
He won’t let them out of his sight.

And the more he watches, the more he sees.

Luella is nothing like Lilith. She is steady, honest, quietly brave — and far too lovely for a man who has sworn never to be fooled again. With a little pressure from his formidable mother and his no‑nonsense housekeeper, Lyall begins to admit the truth: his wards are not what he expected.

Least of all Luella.

Then whisky intervenes.

One moment of warmth, one slip in judgement, one kiss that should never have happened… and everything changes. Desire tangles with duty, resentment melts into longing, and Lyall must face the most dangerous truth of all:

He may have married the wrong Fulbright.
But he’s falling for the right one.