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Elizabeth Everly <elizabeth@elizabetheverly.com
"They call him the mad marquess. The new neighbour across the stream calls him by his name."
Arabella Thorne is twenty-four, a confirmed spinster, and entirely content to be one. She has spent the best years of her youth at her mother's bedside, and what she wants now is what the world has never quite known what to do with: a country cottage, a sketchbook, and the freedom to spend her afternoons studying the birds along a Derbyshire stream.
She does not expect to find anything else there.
She certainly does not expect the man on horseback who appears on the opposite bank one quiet afternoon, large and dark and visibly haunted, the kind of man the village whispers about and crosses streets to avoid. She knows who he must be. Everyone in Derbyshire knows. The mad marquess of Alendale Manor, returned from the Peninsular War a different man than the one who went, with a leg that no longer works the way it should and nightmares that wake the household.
She does not flinch from him. She does not avoid his gaze. She offers him a small, polite smile across thirty feet of water, the way one ordinary person greets another ordinary person on an ordinary afternoon.
It is the kindest thing anyone has done for Jasper Ainsworth in six long months.
Slowly, against every careful wall he has built since the war, the marquess begins to seek her out. Notes left with a returned sketchbook. The location of a rare bird he thought she would want to see. Quiet, deliberate gestures of a man who does not yet trust himself to ask for what he wants, finding ways to give her something instead.
And Arabella, who has been overlooked her whole life, begins to discover what it means to be seen.
But not everyone in the marquess's life is pleased to see him return to the world. Someone has been watching the two of them from the edges of the wood, with a smile too pleasant and eyes too still. And when the danger Jasper survived in the Peninsula finds him again, much closer to home, it will not be the marquess who saves them both.
My Review Notes 5 Stars TITLED: Arabella & Jasper; friendship first
Arabella is a quite, kind, loving woman who keeps her family going. Her sister Phoebe is beautiful, sweet and kind also. She sometimes comes out with unexpected insights. Their father is kind of like an absent minded professor who9 is deeply entrenched as a scholar of history and other similar things. He loves his girls but only as time goes on does he come out of his fog and notices what's doing on with them and their attractions. Arabella is a scholar herself of sorts especially when it comes to birds. And her drawings are exceptional; almost like a scientist. I really loved her easy going manner and how she quietly notices everything. Her sister has meets the new pastor and they are immediately smitten with each other.
Jasper is such a lovely bunch of contradictions. He's so lonely but also afraid. And his charming cousin Victor often slides in like a snake making seemingly innocent remarks. They are like a blade against Jasper's growing confidence. I loved Jasper's mother who lets him be for a while like he asked but then says Okay that's enough ! She begins to see what Victor is doing and doesn't like it a bit ! She loves her son so much and quickly sees Arabella's worth.
This is an emotional story, with a sweet slower romance, and danger does come for Victor ! Great ending though.
I received an ARC from the author and really enjoyed it !
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