Briarhaven (Paperback). This item is unavailable.Briarhaven (Paperback)

Secrets are isolating—unless one dares share them.

Widowed, confronted with dwindling finances, and living under the specter of ruinous secrets, Lady Madeline Embury, Duchess of Markenham, faces the daunting task of raising the next duke alone.

Her neighbor’s property thrives, and Madeline can't help but wonder if Mr. Aidan Hennessy would share his expertise with her in order to return Markenham to solid financial footing. To protect her own and her young son's complicated secrets, Madeline shouldn't give in to the delicious and unalterable attraction she feels for Aidan, even though working side by side on the ledger books leads to passionate kisses that could shatter her resolve.

When they discover Markenham's deficits are due not to mismanagement but to perfidy, Madeline and Aidan set out to locate the missing funds and the culprit. A slow-burn combination of close proximity and dangerous separation forces them to examine their pasts and their feelings for each other.

If Madeline trusts Aidan with her secrets, she risks ridicule and scandal and could lose the means to protect the duchy for the heir. If Aidan heeds the magnetic pull he feels for the young duchess, he risks being rejected again for his illegitimacy, something he cannot change about himself.

Can they ignore the whispers of the past and the strictures Society would place on them for the tender promise of a future filled with love?

BRIARHAVEN is the second, stand-alone novel in the New Beginnings Series.

Addie Bealer is certain she should have sprung from an English garden in the early nineteenth century. She is a Jane Austen devotee and loves classic British literature, the poetry as much as the prose.

She is the author of several pre-published Regency romance novels; short contemporary romances published in Love in the Lowcountry, A Vacation Collection, and Love in the Lowcountry, Winter Holidays Collection Volume 2; and a collection of poetry, some of which has been published in online journals. She is a member of Carolina Romance Writers, Regency Fiction Writers, Romance Writers of America and its online chapter Hearts through History.

Born and raised in New Orleans, the most European of American cities, Addie now lives in South Carolina's upstate, where she is regularly confounded by her sewing machines or flummoxed by the huge messes in her art studio. She loves traveling with her husband for research, relaxation, and red wine.