The Appointed Portion

In 1817 Shropshire, Dinah Thorley knows exactly what a promise is worth—until the one that matters most is never written down. When her dying mother appoints a £14,000 family fund entirely to Dinah's brother, he promises to provide £4,000 for each sister within the year. But debts mount, dates slip, and the money never comes. Then Dinah discovers a flaw in the old settlement that may entitle her and her sister to far more than they were promised. The surviving trustee, Martin Culliford, cannot afford a mistake. Careful, honourable, and infuriatingly unwilling to guess where facts will do, he must decide whom the law requires him to pay. As he and Dinah work through ledgers, deeds, and thirty years of family assumptions, attraction grows between two people who trust paper more easily than one another. But somewhere in Ludlow lies the original deed no one has opened in decades. And when it is finally read, Dinah will have to choose what an exact truth is worth. A warm, intelligent Regency romance about inheritance, family loyalty, money, and love. All books in the series The Conditions of Fortune are standalone books.