In the beautiful and harsh wilds of Tasmania in 1840, Jesmond Corbett returns home after two years of schooling in England. Her father is now dead, and her mother seems indifferent to her return. Jessie must now ponder her future and set a date to be wedded to her betrothed, Harrison Tate. Though promised to Harrison since childhood, Jessie feels a reluctance to marry him. He is ever the proper Englishman with his tightly controlled emotions and expectations of obediance from his fiancee.
But Jessie doesn't truly want to be the perfect Englishwoman. She wants to be true to herself instead of just trying to live up to her mother's expectations. The instant she sees Lucas Gallagher, an Irish convict working at Castle Corbett, Jessie becomes entranced with him. Good looks aside, Lucas is a wonder with Finnegan's Luck, the horse she brought back from London, and Lucas soon becomes her groom. A unique kind of candor develops between Jessie and Lucas, and she feels most alive when she is with him.
Quickly becoming more than friends, Jessie and Lucas soon learn that spending too much time alone can lead them into dangerous waters, the culmination of an attraction that can go nowhere. For Lucas will never be pardoned, and Jessie feels that her heart would break if she if forced to live her life with Harrison.
An emotionally rich story, set in the lush and sometimes unforgiving background of Tasmania, WHISPERS OF HEAVEN is an incredible romance. It brings together two people with apparently nothing in common who both learn to overlook their prejudices and see the person underneath. Jessie begins to love Lucas as the person he has become, though scarred and tortured by the horrors of his last four years as a convict. And Lucas looks beyond Jessie's haughty English exterior and sees the woman she is at heart with an unending capacity for love. Ms. Proctor's descriptive writing adds much to this wonderful historical. Candice Proctor is definitely one of the rising stars of the romance genre.