Lady Dearing's Masquerade — Elena Greene

Hearts in hiding

She became the ton's most notorious widow after kissing a costumed stranger at a masquerade, her reputation destroyed overnight in a swirl of spiteful rumor. Shunned by polite society and unable to forget years of a desperately unhappy marriage, Olivia, Lady Dearing, now hides her heart away where no man will ever find it. Though she fills her life with children she has taken in from London's Foundling Hospital, a stranger's seductive voice haunts her dreams...

He has given up hope of ever finding her, but three years later, the empty place in his heart still aches for the beauty he kissed at the masquerade. Sir Jeremy Fairhill, a widower with painful secrets of his own, devotes himself to the cause of the Foundling Hospital. When he learns that an infamous widow has taken some of the children into her own home, duty alone compels him to investigate. But passion will soon engulf them both, leading to a disastrous scandal--or love...