The Dark Affair

January 20, 2014
In Claremont’s deeply passionate and intriguing third tale of “mad passions” set in 1866 (after Lady in Red), Lady Margaret Cassidy, a beautiful and insightful Irishwoman, meets her match. Margaret is desperate to reach Lord James Stanhope, Viscount Powers, and secure the funds and protection she needs to keep her hotheaded brother, Matthew, safe from the English authorities. Driven by necessity, Margaret reluctantly agrees to James’s father’s request that she marry opium-addicted James and nurse him back to health. As Margaret works her magic on James, she is drawn to his handsome, feral strength as well as to the emotional and compassionate man hiding behind a wall of grief over his daughter’s death. James recognizes that beneath Margaret’s pretty exterior lies a woman of great fortitude who remains in pain over her own terrible history. As circumstance and danger test their relationship, the marriage of convenience becomes much more. Fans will delight in the tangible chemistry between the leads and their harsh, realistic journey to redemption and love.

February 1, 2014
Lady Margaret Cassidy has survived the horrors of the Irish Famine and the Crimean War, but navigating marriage to an opium-addicted lord in order to save her troubled brother may be the most difficult experience she's yet faced. Due to a ravaging drug addiction and his self-destructive behavior, Viscount Powers has ended up in an insane asylum. In desperation, his father has hired Irish aristocrat Lady Margaret to save his son. Renowned for her ability to help addicts crack their dependencies, Maggie is willing to accept the assignment, until the earl attaches the preposterous stipulation that she marry the viscount as well. Despite the money and influence such a union will bring her, Maggie is happy to throw the offer in his face, until he hints that he might also be able to help her brother, who is on the run after attacking an English soldier for yet another indignity against his people. Only agreeing to the marriage under duress, Maggie is shocked to discover that she genuinely likes both Powers and his father, and as Powers moves closer to health, she must admit her attraction to her new husband--an unwelcome reality since marrying an English lord has created tension with her brother and the violent Irish patriots he has taken up with. Claremont tackles a number of grim elements of Victorian society in the third installment of her Mad Passions series, gripping readers with details of the era's harshest realities while steering her characters toward the redemptive powers of forgiveness and love. A dramatic, darkly complex story from a bold new voice in romance.

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