The Last Call: A Romance (vol. 2 of 3)

Dora Harrington's heart is stretched across two urgent demands: her grandfather Lionel Crawford's secret generosity, and her fiancé Lavirotte's illness in Ireland. As she grapples with the weight of financial kindness she never asked for, Dora must also confront her anxiety about the man she's pledged to marry, a man whose past entanglements and hunger for fortune have entangled her fate in ways she's only beginning to understand. This second volume of Dowling's trilogy intensifies the stakes as a financial disaster ripples through the community, threatening the stability of everyone Dora loves. The hidden treasure that has loomed in the family narrative grows more urgent, and the secrets binding these characters together begin to unravel under pressure. Dowling writes with sharp attention to the emotional cost of poverty, the way love can coexist with suspicion, and the particular anguish of a woman caught between duty and desire. For readers who relish Victorian novels where romance unfolds against the shadow of financial ruin, this is a volume that delivers on tension and deepens the mystery at its core.