To Be Left Until Called For

A boy with her brother's locket. A sailor with six years of secrets. And a Christmas that could change everything she thought she knew.

Miss Anne Vosper has spent six years being sensible. She keeps The Quill's accounts, chaperones her cousins to the minute, and leaves certain subjects firmly undiscussed.

Her brother, lost at sea.

The lieutenant she once loved.

And the proposal she refused because she could not trust a man who drank.

Then, on Stir-up Sunday, a ten-year-old boy appears at the library's kitchen steps. In his hand is her brother's locket. On his lips is an impossible claim: he is Kit Vosper's son.

Before Anne can decide what to believe, Commander Gabriel Stroud arrives carrying Kit's sea-chest.

Gabriel has guarded it for six years. He is poor, sober now, and still capable of unsettling her with a glance. He is also the subject of a persistent Portsmouth rumor: that he keeps a wife in Lisbon.

Anne has every reason to demand answers-and every reason to fear them.

Someone sent the boy to The Quill. Someone is asking the family for money. And among Kit's letters lie truths that could explain the child's arrival and overturn the brother Anne thought she knew.

As Advent gives way to Christmas, she and Gabriel must work together to untangle the claims surrounding a little boy who needs a home. With each letter opened and each quiet kindness offered, the future Anne once refused begins to feel possible again.

But trusting Gabriel means more than believing he has changed. It means risking the carefully ordered life she has built-and asking whether being sensible has left room for being happy.

To Be Left Until Called For is Book Four of The Ladies of the Lion's Mouth series and a complete Christmas romance in its own right: a tender second-chance love story filled with family secrets, steadfast affection, and a small boy whose arrival changes an entire household.

A clean and wholesome Regency romance with a gentle mystery, kisses only, no explicit content, no profanity, and a happy ending guaranteed.