An Independent Lady

First published 1999. This edition 2018.
After struggling to survive using any means necessary, Mrs. Amy Chantry has found a safe haven as companion to the dowager Lady Hawkridge, where she can put the past behind her and make a new life for herself—as long as she doesn’t suffer the same fate as her predecessors.
Thanks to his grandmother’s trusting and benevolent nature, Marcus Rothwell, Earl of Hawkridge, is constantly obliged to evict confidence tricksters from his ancestral home. He probably can’t toss the latest one through the library window as he did the last man aiming to defraud his grandmother—after all, Mrs. Chantry is a lady and a widow to boot—but he intends to remove her from beneath his grandmother’s protective wing.
When he meets Amy, however, he immediately wants to put her under his protection in another capacity altogether. The punishing right she delivers to his jaw alters this ambition rather swiftly. But before he can put things right, Marc has to win Amy’s trust. And winning the trust of such a wary, defensive little creature won’t be easy.
But Amy’s past is not as deeply buried as she thinks. Not only is her new position under threat, so is her very life.