Speak Only Love

I beg to differ with the main review for the book as "uninspired" This is one of the best romance books I've read and my first read of it was this year even though it was published 10 years ago! It has all the elements needed for a historical romance. It has passionate scenes, romantic tension/development between the hero/heroine, a tortured hero who at first appears a drunken wastrel, a handicapped mute heroine that develops her inner strength and love for the hero thruout the book. I was able to see inside both the minds of the hero and the heroine as the author wanted. Basically, the story is as the main review above says, but Piers (the tortured hero)'s family is maladjusted. Piers's father is verbally abusive to his wife, Piers mother, even as she is on her deathbed. Piers's father is also unfaithful and is sleeping with the household's snooty, mean main housekeeper. Pier is angry at this. He loved his mother so much. Ever since the carriage accident as a child, the Vivian, heroine can not talk but can hear and writes out her thoughts to everyone. She is being tricked by her greedy cousin to live in a nunnery while her cousin happily spends her money while bribing her lawyer to help him do it. Piers's father, Larne, a very old, cantankerous, bullying, verbally abusive father, states to her that he was trying to get ahold of her by naming themselves(Piers and his wife) as guardians because his wife was the goddaughter of Vivian's grandmother, but Vivian's cousin refused, so Piers' father has her brought over in the guile of a need for healers to help out his now dying wife. Larne has had the heroine's finances investigated and finds out she is a wealthy heiress and informs her of this. But she doesn't trust Larne and runs to her solicitor in London who traps her. She runs away and is thankfully rescued by Larne's people. Larne wants ahold of her money and land and must have a REAL heir (because he despises his weak son Piers), so he forces Piers as a matter of family honor/duty as well as the Vivian (addressing her fear of her cousin's and lawyer's greed) to marry each other. Piers hates being forced to marry, but relents, but their relationship is a happy one since they're both attracted to each other in the marriage bed and the fact that the heroine is sensitive to his moods and emotional pain. And the hero also (unknowingly to her) aids in her speech development as he hears her talk in her sleep while she's in bed with him which comes to a climax at the end of the book. Now the rest I'm going to state may be a spoiler for you if you don't like spoilers!! Why is the Larne, Pier's father so in need of her wealth? Because he says his estates do not produce enough money. He even pulls Piers from only 2 years of college schooling (In contrast to the Larne, Piers' mother had wanted Piers to begin and complete his schooling), stating that there is not enough money to send Piers to school. So for a very long time, h