Gallant Scoundrel

Celebrated war hero Harry Thatcher returned to England a drunken wastrel and determined bachelor. He takes up the mantle of the Saint of Seven Dials in an attempt to halt his march down the path to ruin, but what first set him on that path? Most assume it was the battlefield injury that cost Harry his arm but years earlier, there was a woman… 

Xena Maxwell fascinated Harry when he met her in an Army camp on the Peninsula. Heedless of convention after traveling the world with her scholarly father, she preferred breeches to dresses and was as gifted at repairing wounds as causing them, with pistol or sword. Harry’s attraction and Xena’s disregard for propriety ended in a forced wedding and immediate separation by her furious father. Wartime miscommunication led each to believe the other dead until, seven years later, they abruptly come face to face in London! 

Overcoming their mutual shock, they agree to ignore that long-ago wedding and go their separate ways until Harry’s meddling best friend tricks them into giving their marriage a chance by sharing a house for the month of December. Can living openly as husband and wife—and a dose of Christmas spirit—repair old wounds and give them the happy ending they were denied seven years before?

The latest installment in Brenda Hiatt’s bestselling Saint of Seven Dials series!