Smoke and Sterling

Series Note:
The Children of Scandal series moves forward in time to the early Victorian era, following the next generation — the sons and daughters of the American Heiresses couples — as they get their own happily ever afters. Each book is a standalone romance.

Rose Sterling has spent her life proving she's more than an earl's decorative daughter.

She's traded ballrooms for factory floors, leveraging her title and her mother's American audacity to fight for reform in Parliament. She doesn't need a husband. She needs the Ten Hours Act to pass — and she needs the testimony of one infuriatingly stubborn mill owner to make it happen.

Samuel Holt built his cotton mill from nothing.

A former child worker with a scarred hand and a will to match, he runs the only factory in Manchester where children learn to read and workers leave before dark. He doesn't need an earl's daughter marching through his mill, rearranging his ledgers, and telling him his best isn't good enough.

He especially doesn't need her to be right.

But night after night, across ledgers and late-hour debates, Rose discovers the one thing her armor can't withstand: a man who sees past her title — and refuses to be managed.

Cholera is rising. The mill owners are circling. And falling for him means choosing between the cause that defines her and the man who makes her want to surrender.

She has no use for a rescuer. He has never trusted anyone born with a title. And the distance between an earl's daughter and a self-made man is the kind that ruins people.

Unless, together, they can build something neither could alone.

A sweeping enemies-to-lovers Victorian romance of class, courage, and the most dangerous reform of all. For fans of Lisa Kleypas and Sarah MacLean.