A Variation for the Stranger at the Door

She remembers every note she has ever heard. He represents the man who means to take her family's music away.

Miss Rosamund Vesey can play a piece after hearing it once. As deputy organist at St Anselm's, she has built her life around music-and around ensuring that nobody discovers she is deaf in one ear.

Nobody stands on her left. Nobody needs to know.

Then Mr. Edmund Harcourt begins appearing at her right shoulder. Clever, kind, and a dreadful flautist, he is becoming inconveniently difficult to dislike. He is also junior counsel for the Earl of Halcombe, whose lawsuit threatens her aunt's beloved music library.

Rosamund has every reason to keep her distance.

On Twelfth Night, a stranger knocks at No. 7 Ormond Square with a gold ring and a claim that could overturn everything.

Julian Goodwill says he is the son of the late Francis Mallory-and heir to the famous Hesperus Sonata and every page of music in the house. By Candlemas, his claim is in the newspapers. So is the story of a girl in a ball dress at dawn in the Bath Upper Rooms, a story the family has kept silent for twenty-eight years.

To protect the household, Rosamund and Edmund must uncover what happened before either of them was born.

Their search leads from a freezing organ loft to the dusty sailing registers of India House. But finding the evidence will demand more than Rosamund's extraordinary memory or Edmund's skill with an argument. She must trust him with the truth about her hearing. He must decide whether he is prepared to challenge his own client.

And as their guarded acquaintance becomes a courtship neither expected, the secrets they reveal may change far more than the ownership of a library.

A Variation for the Stranger at the Door is Book Eight of The Ormond Square Duets: a tender, witty Regency romance featuring a disputed inheritance, a Lenten concert, an outspoken deaf old lady, and a proposal in the rain.

A clean and wholesome romance with a gentle mystery, no explicit content, and a happy ending assured.