With This Curse

Can a curse strike twice in a woman's life?

I was a seventeen-year-old chambermaid in 1854 when the Gravesend curse tore my life apart. I was dismissed from Gravesend Hall for having fallen in love with Richard Blackwood, the younger son of the house, and was forced to make my way alone in the world as a seamstress. The curse dealt its cruelest blow when Richard was killed soon after in the Crimean War.

A proposal...

Now more than eighteen years have passed, and Richard's twin, Atticus, has sought me out with a strange proposal: if I agree to marry him and live with him as his wife in name only to ease the mind of his dying father, Atticus will endow me with a comfortable income for the rest of my life. I know he is not disclosing his true motives, but with no remaining options for an independent life, I have no choice but to become his wife.

A deception...

Returning to Gravesend as a bride brings a sense of triumph... but also great unease. Not only must I pretend to be a wellborn lady and devoted wife to a man whose face is a constant reminder of my lost love, but ominous portents whisper that this masquerade brings grave danger. "This house will take from you what you most treasure", my mother once warned me. But the curse has already taken the man I loved. Will it now demand my life?