Earl's Borrowed Heart

A reckless earl with a failing heart.A brilliant physician who refuses to lose another patient.A machine that can turn survival into obedience.When Ivo Trevenna collapses during a dawn duel, Dr. Lettice Wardle saves him by implanting her experimental Vital Regulator. The device should steady his damaged heart. Instead, someone begins commanding it from afar—delivering pain through music, rhythm, and a mysterious five-beat signal.Then another regulator patient dies.The official records do not agree. Poor patients have vanished into a private rest home. Soldiers suffering from battlefield panic have been transferred without consent. And a celebrated physician is preparing a demonstration that could transform Lettice's medical miracle into an instrument of absolute control.To expose the conspiracy, Lettice must keep Ivo close enough to examine, monitor, and protect. Ivo, infuriatingly alive and determined to prove it, resists every restriction she imposes.Yet beneath his reckless charm is a man terrified that each heartbeat may be his last. Beneath Lettice's clinical composure is a woman beginning to want the future she has forbidden herself to imagine.Every adjustment of the regulator brings them closer.Every secret choice drives them apart.When the experiments threaten the patients no one bothered to count, doctor and earl must decide whether love means preserving a life at any cost—or trusting another person with the truth, the danger, and the freedom to choose.The Earl's Borrowed Heart is the fourth novel in The Clockwork Brides, a sensual Victorian romance series blending gothic mystery, scientific invention, dangerous conspiracy, and women determined to claim ownership of both their work and their lives.