A Dangerous Undertaking

Margaret Donnington set out to stay with her great-uncle Henry Capitain, but the man she found was a disreputable rogue, so she sought shelter at Winterford Manor instead. There, Roland, Lord Pargeter, announced that he required a wife and proposed a twelve-month arrangement in which they would wed in name only. Margaret felt she had wandered into a house of lunatics, yet her finances were thin and she saw no prospects of employment, so she agreed.

Only once the vows were spoken does Margaret discover that the Pargeter family labours under an old curse, and that living under its shadow may place her in real peril.