Mercy Alston knows the best thing to do with pesky feelings like "love" and "hope": avoid them at all cost. Serving as a maid to Eliza Hamilton, and an assistant in the woman's stubborn desire to preserve her late husband's legacy, has driven that point home for Mercy-as have her own previous heartbreaks. When Andromeda Stiel shows up at Hamilton Grange for an interview in her grandfather's stead, Mercy's resolution to live a quiet, pain-free life is tested by the beautiful, flirtatious, and entirely overwhelming dressmaker. Andromeda is a woman who knows what she wants and resolutely overcomes anything that tries to stop her. She's a seamstress, shopkeeper, and soon to be owner of her very own boarding house-if she doesn't get distracted by Mercy, a luminescent woman furiously trying to dim her own light. Andromeda is intrigued, and when Mercy declares that she doesn't believe in love-well, Andromeda does love a challenge. They find in each other both friendship and a fierce attraction that won't be denied. Mercy begins dusting off the parts of herself she'd locked away for safekeeping, and Andromeda finds in Mercy something more fulfilling than the thrill of the chase. Neither is prepared for love, though, and both must learn to trust in the possibility that it will be enough.
