Physician of Ashbury

The village of Ashbury has a physician's vacancy, no money to fill it, and one woman who knows the work. Bess Thorpe was apprenticed out of the workhouse and trained in an apothecary's back room. When he dies, she takes his post, his patients, and his name — on sufferance. Five weeks in, the estate sends someone to audit the books. Edmund Ashby is a third son with a surgeon's training and no prospects, ordered to close a village he has never visited. He finds out what Bess is doing within a week. He does not report her. He picks up a saw and helps. But the estate will not appoint a woman, and the village will not accept anyone else. What Bess wants is her own name on the post. What Edmund must decide is how much of his family he is willing to give away to keep it there. A rags to romance regency romance set in one small village that refuses to lose the woman who keeps it alive.