Book overview
Nia O'Doyle has always met life at a gallop: on horseback, with a bow in hand, and with her dearest friends, the Huntresses, at her side. But a dangerous bout of rheumatic fever has left her too weak to cross a garden, let alone return home after a gathering of her dear friends. Nia stays behind at Fairfield to recover, keeping the severity of her condition to herself rather than adding to her family's mounting troubles in Ireland. She is determined to reclaim the life she loved but is quietly terrified that it is permanently out of reach.
Colm Greenberry has been certain of one thing since Waterloo: he is never quite enough. Not for the parents whose grief he cannot ease. Not for his fellow soldiers in need of so much after decades of warfare. Not for the Pack, the gentlemen who welcomed him but among whom he still feels an outsider. Left to look after Nia in his parents' absence, he sets out to give her reasons to hope and perhaps find a reason for himself to feel like less of a disappointment.
But the more joy Colm helps Nia find in a life neither of them planned, the more he risks offering her a future he is not certain he can give. With her passage home to Ireland already arranged and her health anything but settled, they will need far more than luck if they are to have any hope of a happy ever after.