His Cold Heart, My Broken Soul

She was a sailmaker’s daughter with a ruined name and a debt she could never pay.

He was the cold shipping heir who had watched her for two winters.

Matthias Crane offers Liesbeth Ward a contract: thirty clauses, one year, a roof over her brother’s head. She marks his terms up in pencil. He answers every change in ink.

He keeps a black logbook of her nights. He keeps a locked room at the top of the house. He keeps the truth about the ship that sank her father’s name.

Liesbeth is not a prisoner. She tests every lock, bargains for every hour, and learns what the man behind the ice is guarding. But when her father’s last letter turns up under a gravestone, the only way to clear his name runs through the sea, a storm, and a man who cannot swim.