Excerpt of Way of the Heart by Cheryl Holt

Jane Fitzsimmons is smart, a woman who loves nothing more
than to pass her time at her father’s side, helping him to
operate their family’s shipbuilding business. She was
never interested in female pursuits, and, when she looks
to the future, she sees herself busily engaged in
commerce, helping the Fitzsimmons’ Shipworks to grow and
prosper.
Her father has other ideas. He secretly settles a large
dowry on her and arranges with a solicitor to find her
five suitable marriage candidates, then ships her off to
London, insisting she marry whichever one she chooses.

She soon learns that her suitors all have one thing in
common: they are all flat broke. However, only one of them
stirs her blood and ignites her passions, but, to her
dismay, she discovers that he is all despicable things
rolled into one.

Phillip Wessington, Earl of Rosewood, is a gambler, a
drunk, a ladies’ man who has spent his life playing and
loafing. He’s also a pauper, but he has no idea how to
live like a poor man, so he continues to spend and frolic.

When his solicitor provides him with a chance to fix his
financial situation -- by marrying Jane, a merchant’s
daughter -- he initially scoffs at the idea, but as his
circumstances go from bad to worse, he decides to risk it.

Jane agrees to the marriage. But her new husband has no
intention of altering his lifestyle simply because he’s
taken a bride, and, shortly after they’re wed, she’s
leaves him in disgust.

Phillip initially thinks himself to be the luckiest man in
the kingdom when Jane departs. He has all his wife’s
glorious money without the bother of a wife, so why does
he feel so miserable with her gone? She has an irritating
way of making a man think about duty, and family and
responsibility, and he can’t help realizing that his life
has taken a despicable turn when he is such a wretched cad
that his own wife refuses to live with him.

Determined to win Jane’s affection, to mend the rift he’s
caused in their hasty union, he decides to change his
habits and behavior in order to convince her to give him
another chance.

Can Phillip become a new man? Can he woo Jane and repair
their battered relationship? Will Jane let him? Does she
really want him back? Is he worth having? Worth keeping?

Join Jane as she struggles through all the ways the heart
can lead a woman to love the most unlikely character. Will
she be able to help Phillip find the sense of love and
family he’s been searching for all his life?