THE DARK AFFAIR

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.