Farewell

An orphan given everything except the one thing that matters: to be truly known. James Brooke is a shop assistant, alone in the world, when he returns a lost purse to a beautiful woman glimpsed only in shadow. Her proposition is extraordinary: she will give him wealth beyond imagination, but only if he marries her without ever knowing her name, her face, or her reasons. He accepts, thinking he's found his way out of poverty. Years pass. He thrives. But wealth cannot purchase what he truly craves, and when another woman awakens his heart, the secrets of his peculiar bargain begin to unravel in ways neither he nor Miss Grey could have foreseen. A Victorian romance threaded with mystery and social critique, Stacpoole's forgotten gem asks what love truly costs when it comes disguised as charity, and whether we can ever truly escape the chains of our own generosity.