Mistress Anne

Anne Warfield teaches school in a town too small to hold her ambitions. After the holidays fade and the lodge falls quiet, she's left with nothing but cold rooms, quiet corridors, and the particular ache of a young woman watching her best years slip past unnoticed. Then a train arrives bearing Richard Brooks and his glittering circle of friends, and suddenly the lodge crackles with life, with laughter, with the romantic adventure Anne has only imagined. She finds an unlikely companion in Diogenes, a lonely drake she rescues and tends, a creature as isolated as she feels in this world of sophisticated guests and unspoken class divisions. As the party swirls around her, Anne stands at a threshold: remain the quiet observer, the compassionate outsider, or reach for something more? Temple Bailey captures the tender agony of longing, the way hope flickers when new possibilities arrive, and the quiet courage it takes to claim your own life.