Piecework

Description

She won’t ask. He can’t lie. And someone is keeping score.

Boston, 1913. Vivienne Morrow steps off the boat with sixteen American cents sewn into her cuff and a letter promising her brother will meet her at the pier. He doesn’t. The address is wrong. The only door open to a girl with a carpetbag is the one on Kneeland Street, past a picket line of women who spit.

Seven years of piecework will teach her how to survive on arithmetic. It cannot teach her what to do when a stranger offers the one thing she’s sworn never to ask for.

Phelan has been tending South Boston since before the street was paved. He pours a fair pint, keeps the regulars out of trouble, and walks the old wards at night, patching the places where something dark leaks through. He is not what he looks. He cannot say a false word without it costing him blood. He has built a life with exactly one rule: nobody gets close.

Vivienne gets close.

Between a ledger and a lamp, through a strike, a war, a plague, and the long reach of the law, they build something that has no business lasting. But love in this city always comes with a price, and Vivienne is the sort of woman who has always known to the penny what things cost.

PIECEWORK is the first book in the Ask Me Again series: a slow-burn historical romance with old magic, found family, and a love worth earning twice.

For readers of The Night Circus, A Discovery of Witches, and anyone who has ever done the sums on the back of a pay envelope.