The Agent at Ashcombe Park

About this book:

Rain lashes the Yorkshire moors as Julian Thorne descends from the coach, trading his Whitehall cipher for a colonial accent and a lie. He is no timber merchant's son from New Brunswick—he is a Home Office agent hunting French gold flowing through the mortgaged veins of England's northern gentry. His target: Sir Giles Ashcombe, a baronet rotting in a house that leaks in eleven rooms, his daughter Clara guarding the gate with a candlestick and a tongue sharper than any blade.

But Ashcombe Park is more than a debtor's fortress. Beneath the peeling plaster and the muttonless table, the cellar ledger tells a story of drafts drawn on Geneva banks. The bailiffs circling the gatehouse know the back roads better than the law. And somewhere between the lime walk and the black tarn, a traitor waits—one who holds the county's armories and the weavers' empty bellies in the same cold hand.

Thorne has three days before the mist lifts. Three days to separate treason from desperation, to learn whether Clara Ashcombe is his ally or his executioner, and to find the proof before the French contact collects his due. In a house where the motto reads *Faithful to the End*, the end may be closer than anyone suspects.