London, 1815.
The Earl of Ravensworth returned from Waterloo with a body that no longer feels — silver needles don't sting, boiling tea doesn't burn, and the ton calls him the Ice Earl.
Then he walks into a tailor's shop on Savile Row, and the fingertips of "Mr. Hawthorne" — a woman bound, disguised, and desperate to save her late father's shop — brush his wounded shoulder. For the first time in three years, he feels.
One fitting becomes an obsession. Chasing her lie, he finds his own heart beating again. But a traitor inside his family trust, rumors that carry the death penalty, and a public unmasking at Carlton House are closing in on them both.
When all of London waits to watch the seamstress fall, he takes her hand before the entire ton:
**"I knew. And I chose her anyway."
