Dragonmede

To Eustacia Rochdale, life in 1800s London was exciting, if uncertain. Her beautiful mother Luella courted the rich and titled who came to her Bloomsbury home to gamble and managed to win enough from her guests to live comfortably, but was determined that her daughter achieve the respectable upper-class marriage that she herself could never attain. When Eustacia meets Julian Kershaw-heir to Dragonmede, a title and a family fortune-Luella is delighted. Desperately gambling on the young man's unskilled passion for cards and his obvious attraction towards Eustacia, she succeeds in arranging their engagement. Eustacia arrives at Dragonmede as Julian's new bride, unaware of her mother's manipulations. She is met with hostility and suspicion, and when Julian himself becomes cold and withdrawn, she begins to wonder if the various accidents occurring since her arrival are not indeed attempts on her life.