Ireland, 1881. The Land War is burning through Mayo, and Delia Rourke has just signed away her future to save a dying estate. Shipped from Boston as her father's pawn — the American heiress who'll buy her family's way into respectability — she refuses to play the decorative bride. Armed with a stolen ledger and twenty years of lies in double-entry columns, she's come to prove what everyone denies: Ardglass isn't failing because of boycotts. It's being robbed from the inside.
Fintan Merrick is out of time, out of money, and out of choices. The receiver arrives in weeks. The American's father holds the only lifeline. But the woman who walked into his house isn't the silent investor he was promised — she's taken legal control of everything he owns, and she's hunting for a thief he's trusted for two decades.
Now Delia must strip the fraud bare before the estate falls into receivership, clear Fintan's name from a conspiracy he never saw, and make the man who married her for money see her as something more than the price he paid. In a house where loyalty is currency and every truth she uncovers makes her more dangerous, mercy and conquest look exactly the same.
