Cinders and Vows

A scorched manor. A governess with nothing to lose. A lord who ruins everything he touches. Mireille Calloway has survived poverty, scandal, and the slow erosion of every illusion she once held. When she arrives at Ashworth Manor, a blackened estate clinging to the bones of its former grandeur, she expects cold corridors and crueler employers. What she finds is worse: a household balanced on a knife's edge, indebted to the dangerous Silas Thorne, governed by Lady Ashworth's quiet malice, and ruled by Lucien Ashworth, a man whose reputation precedes him like smoke. Rumors claim he destroyed his last governess. The servants barely meet his eyes. And yet, as Mireille settles into her post, she glimpses the man beneath the frost, a father, a steward, someone fighting a war he cannot win. Each small kindness draws her deeper into a web of obligation and attraction she did not ask for. But Ashworth Manor hides more than grief behind its scorched stones. As debts come due and old secrets surface, Mireille must choose: protect her fragile position, or surrender to the one man whose ruin has always been catching.