A Distance Measured

Philadelphia, 1738.

After eight weeks at sea, Elizabeth Hayward arrives from Bristol with little more than a trunk, a journal, and four years of her life already promised in exchange for her passage. Her new position at Hannum House should be straightforward. Keep the accounts. Manage the correspondence. Tend the medicinal stores. Serve out her indenture and decide what comes afterward.

Then she meets Henry Hannum.

Reserved, wealthy, and determined to keep his household at a careful distance, Henry is unlike any man Elizabeth has known. Their first encounter leaves her convinced he is gravely ill. Their second makes her question everything she thought she understood about illness.

As Elizabeth settles into life beyond Germantown, friendship and courtship offer the possibility of an ordinary future. Henry offers something far harder to name. And when a dangerous stranger begins circling Hannum House, the questions Elizabeth has tried to leave unanswered become impossible to ignore.

Some distances are measured in miles. Others lie between what is known, what is hidden, and what two people are willing to risk to cross them.