The Kestrel and the Agent
She wears two faces.
By day, Alice Merrick is the minister's daughter - quiet, capable, the kind of woman a room forgets the moment she leaves it. By night, she is the Kestrel, captain of a masked crew who takes from the merchants bleeding Carreg Bay dry and gives back to the families left with nothing.
She has kept both lives perfectly separate for years.
Then Marcus Drake arrives.
He is a Crown Agent sent to catch her, a former smuggler who knows how the shadows work, and the first person in years who looks at Alice - really looks - and sees more than she intends to show. He is supposed to be her enemy. He keeps making it very difficult.
Then Silas Crowe sails into the harbor.
He is not a man who asks questions or makes threats. He is a man who studies a town until he understands exactly what it loves, and then uses that knowledge with cold, methodical precision. He has broken operations like the Kestrel's before. He has broken the people who ran them. And he has never once lost sleep over the cost.
With Crowe closing in, Alice must choose between protecting her carefully constructed double life and fighting openly for the town she loves. And Marcus must decide what he actually believes in - the law he swore to uphold, or the woman who has been upholding justice in its place.
Some crimes are acts of conscience. Some loyalties are acts of love. And some choices, once made, cannot be unmade.
The Kestrel is a historical romance about identity, justice, and the particular courage it takes to let someone see exactly who you are.
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