After two months of treatment at Puddling-on-the-Wold, Mary Nicola Mayfield has shown no improvement, and her condition seems impervious to rehab. But Nicola is not the typical guest of Gloucestershire’s destination village for the wealthy and wayward. The trauma of surviving a horrific train wreck has rendered her mute; her injuries have healed, but try as she might, she cannot utter a sound. With her family and fiancé at their wits’ end, Nicola knows Puddling is the resort—the last resort—that holds any hope for her recovery. Lord Jack Ryder—baron, businessman and, some say, mad genius—has gone from the heights of success to hit rock bottom, after a faulty girder from his iron foundry caused a dreadful bridge collapse. Nothing has assuaged his guilt over the passenger train that crashed or the lives that were destroyed. The stringent regimen at Puddling is not doing much for his deep depression—until he meets his mysteriously silent neighbor. Their fiery affair breaks all the rules, but will the unspoken truth be too hot to handle?