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Not betrothed, but beguiled

In artistic circles she is the Divine Dita, Paris’sas playing a role: fiancée to the next earl of Athal The charade is a favor to Dita’s friend, Eddie Jago, a dissolute painter…and the aforeo, it is innocent compared to ill come

On the grim Cornish coast, froos’ sumptuous new manor house The fresh-hewn stone, however, cannot absorb the blood of centuries or quiet the echoes of past criles to decipher the family: the infirm earl and his inscrutable wife; resentful Eddie; sheltered sister Eleanor And Cad: the handsome second son whose reputation is spotless in business—scandalous everywhere else

Drawn by friendship, ensnared by lust, Dita uncovers a sordid tangle of murder, desire and madness It will lay her bare as no portraitist has done before

Prologue

My journey to Tenebris started land I suppose it really began on the day I found a very beautiful, very naked man asleep in my apartment

It was one of those pure, perfect April days when the Parisian sky was endlessly blue, skylarks sang and sunlight glinted on the crowded rooftops The scent of just-baked bread and freshly poured coffee lingered in the still air An accordion player provided a wailing accooers as they sipped cloudy Pernod or rolled aro arb affected by poets and artists, hailed htly past them I waved a hand and hurried on The tiny attic rooms I rented were close to the Élysée Theatre in the Mont, I burst in throughmy hat and cloak aside I had lived here since I first arrived in Paris, al to feel like hoht was bittersweet

I must have let out a squeal, or made another sound of surprise, because the stark-naked th onblue of his eyes and that his bare li and wellto cover his exposed groin with an eht that it was hardly the action of a dangerous attacker alleviated arded each other warily before he burst out laughing

“How did you get in here?” I demanded Later, I would look back and wonder why it didn’t occur to me to be afraid

“You should lock your door,” he said, yawning to show very white teeth

“I always do! And I know I did just that before I left here this ,” I informed him It was true No one had more cause than I to be meticulous about security

He laughed again, a little sheepishly this time My memory processed the fact that I had seen hier, wilder artists who frequented the theatres and bars of Montht and reood looks “Very well, perhaps I should have said ‘You should make sure your door can’t be unlocked by anyone with half a brain and a penknife’” The subtle trace of an English accent caught my ears

Those words should, of course, have been endarmes But, bizarrely, I didn’t feel at risk from my unclothed intruder, and I like to think I have a well-honed sense of danger So, instead of fleeing, I asked thearound my head “Why have you taken all your clothes off?”

“They’re wet,” he pointed out And he was right; every itear on the floorboards beneath I clickedhis jacket, shirt and trousers so that they ain, still holding the strategically placed cushion, and watched me

“And, if it’s not an iht I also ask what you are doing here?”

“It was a wager,” he said, as though that explained everything And, in a way, it did The group I had seen hiamblers