The dead never truly leave. Lady Felicia Disbrowe, widowed and impoverished, has one ambition: to see her daughter Cara marry into wealth and restore their shattered respectability. But Cara has other ideas. She falls for Lancelot Davis, a handsome poet with nothing but verses to his name, and in doing so, defies everything her mother has sacrificed to provide. Their passionate romance blooms in the shadow of grief and financial ruin, but something darker lurks beneath the surface of their love. Braddon, the master of Victorian sensation, weaves a tale where the past refuses to stay buried and the living can never fully escape those they've lost. It is a novel about the weight of expectation, the terrible cost of following one's heart, and the question of whether we ever truly belong to the living when the dead hold such power over us.
