The Housekeeper's Secret
A Novel
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5.0 • 1 Rating
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- $21.99
Publisher Description
"This BEAUTIFULLY-WRITTEN HISTORICAL is a SUMPTUOUS, PAGE-TURNING DELIGHT
filled with an enticing mix of FORBIDDEN ROMANCE and buried secrets.”
—Ellen Marie Wiseman, New York Times bestselling author of The Lost Girls of Willowbrook
Duty, desire, and deception reside under one roof.
Standing in the remote windswept moors of Northern England, Coldwell Hall is the perfect place to hide. For the past five years, Kate Furniss has maintained her professional mask so carefully that she almost believes she is the character she has created: Coldwell’s respectable housekeeper.
It is the summer of 1911 that brings new faces above and below the stairs of Coldwell Hall—including the handsome and mysterious new footman, Jem Arden. Just as the house’s shuttered rooms open, so does Kate’s guarded heart to a love affair that is as intense as it is forbidden. But Kate can feel her control slipping as Jem harbors secrets of his own.
Told in alternating timelines from the last sun-drenched summer of the Edwardian Age to the mud-filled trenches of WWI, The Housekeeper's Secret opens its door to a world of romance, the truths we hold onto, and the past we must let go.
"RICH IN ATMOSPHERE AND BRIMMING WITH INTRIGUE, THE HOUSEKEEPER'S SECRET IS NOT TO BE MISSED!"
–Amanda Skenandore, award-winning author of The Nurse's Secret
"BRILLIANTLY RESEARCHED…I rooted for Kate, fell completely in love with Jem, and will hold their unforgettable story close for a very long time to come."
–Jenny Ashcroft, author of Island in the East and The Officer and the Spy
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Grey (The Glittering Hour) delivers a fervent upstairs-downstairs drama set against the backdrop of WWI. At Coldwell Hall, Kate Furniss works as a housekeeper under a false name, having fled her abusive husband. She keeps a low profile until the arrival of Jem Arden, who's taken a job as a footman to find out what happened to his younger brother, Jack, a former servant who disappeared at Coldwell during a shooting party there years earlier. Relationships between staff members are forbidden, but Kate and Jem's mutual attraction overwhelms them, and they embark on a secret affair. After the death of patriarch Sir Henry Hyde, the estate passes to his son, Randolph, whose self-serving valet discovers Kate's true identity, prompting her to flee without alerting Jem. The consequences of the pair's forbidden romance are teased out in letters written by Jem, now a soldier, on the eve of the Battle of Somme in 1916. In them, he professes his love for Kate without knowing where to reach her. Meanwhile, Kate works as a housekeeper near Brighton and volunteers at a convalescent hospital for soldiers. Grey's insightful narrative sheds light on ways in which the war "jolted out of their "torpor," as one former Coldwell servant puts it, opening new opportunities for factory work and military service. This will keep readers turning the pages.
