Dorothy Harcourt's Secret: Sequel to "A Deed Without a Name

On a frost-bitten Christmas morning in Washington City, Roma reclines in her parlor by lamplight, waiting for the Christmas sleigh to return. The apartment glows with the warmth of celebration: little Owlet sleeps in Santa's arms, Madame Nouvellini dozes in her invalid chair. But peace is fragile. Will Harcourt, the man Roma loves, has vanished into the city's dangerous underbelly, and no word has come. "Hope deferred makes the heart sick." With these words hanging between them, Roma faces a choice: surrender to grief or transform her loss into purpose. She chooses the children, the abandoned, the forgotten, the ones even criminal neighborhoods cannot claim. This sequel to "A Deed Without a Name" is Victorian domestic drama at its most emotionally acute, a story about how love survives absence, how grief becomes vocation, and whether the heart can endure when the beloved remains forever out of reach.