Sebastian St. Cyr is drawn into a murder investigation in a
deceptively peaceful English village in this gripping historical mystery
from the national bestselling author of Why Kill the Innocent.
Ayleswick-on-Teme, 1813. Sebastian St. Cyr, Viscount Devlin, and his
wife, Hero, have come to this deceptively peaceful Shropshire village to
honor a slain friend. But when the body of a young widow is found on the
banks of the river Teme, the village's inexperienced new magistrate
turns to Sebastian for help. Sebastian soon realizes that Emma Chance
was hiding her true identity, and she was not the first beautiful young
woman in the village to be murdered. Also troubling are the machinations
of Lucien Bonaparte, the estranged brother of the megalomaniac French
Emperor Napoléon. Held captive under the British government's watchful
eye, Bonaparte is restless, ambitious, and treacherous.
Home to the eerie ruins of an ancient monastery, Ayleswick reveals
itself to be a dark and dangerous place with a violent past that may be
connected to Sebastian's own unsettling origins. And as he faces his
most diabolical opponent ever, he is forced to consider what malevolence
he's willing to embrace in order to destroy a killer.