The Thorncombe Ledger: 2

Devon, summer 1816. The harvest has failed, the weather will not mend, and the tenants of Thorncombe Hall are hungry.Yet the estate books show a healthy surplus.Miss Margaret "Meg" Alcott, companion to the lady of the house, knows the figures cannot be telling the whole truth. When a hidden ledger falls from behind a loose library shelf, her suspicions deepen. So does her interest in Thorncombe's newly hired steward, Mr. Nathaniel Grey, whose eye for coastlines and tides seems unusually sharp for a man of his position.Nathaniel is hiding something of his own. A former naval lieutenant and the estranged heir to Thorncombe, he has returned under a false name to discover the true condition of the estate before revealing himself.Together, Meg and Nathaniel follow the missing money through false accounts, unexplained night noises in the supposedly haunted west wing, an old priest hole, and a lugger appearing offshore without colours. The outgoing land agent, burdened by gambling debts and control of the books, appears to be the obvious thief.But the loudest suspect is not the true one.Set during 1816's Year Without a Summer, The Thorncombe Ledger is an atmospheric Regency romance and fair-play mystery of hidden identity, coastal smuggling, a starving community, and two people determined to trust what they can see over what they have been told.