While her employer and friend lay dying, Emme promised Mirabel Youngwin that her five young daughters would stay together, vowing to herself she would never be parted from them either. Now, two years later, the children's father has also passed. Thrown out of the family home, Emme must find somewhere for her and her charges to stay until their new guardian arrives-when they will most likely be taken to start a new life without her. She heads to the Home for Desolate Ladies, to take refuge there and work out how she can prevent herself from being separated from her beloved girls.Stranded on a roadside after their carriage breaks down, Emme is grateful when a gentleman stops to help. Lord Luke Parker is handsome, kind, and good with the children, and she can't help being drawn him. So when Luke arrives at the Home a few days before Christmas to announce that he's been appointed the sisters' guardian, she's presented with a heartrending dilemma. How can she persuade Luke not to dismiss her-and if she succeeds, stop herself from falling for him even more deeply?