The Winter She Returned

Marianne Hale left Derbyshire ten years ago with a letter in her pocket that said the man she loved had married another. She has believed it every day since. Now she is back to bury her father, sell his ruined mill, and leave before the snow. The snow has other plans. Thomas Ashcroft is a widower, a landowner and the only person in the valley who can keep the mill from burning — or from being burned by the men it has not paid. He has spent a decade believing Marianne chose money over him. Trapped together by the weather and bound together by a debt neither can pay alone, they begin to discover that the letter was never his. In a cold house, with a village watching and a fire threatening, two stubborn people finally ask the question they should have asked ten years ago.