The most dangerous secrets are the ones we keep from ourselves. In a Philadelphia ballroom, Marguerite De Lancie plays her harp while the city's most powerful men watch, bewitched. She is beautiful, brilliant, and utterly convinced she controls her own fate. But beneath the music lies a family mystery, a whispered truth that has corrupted two generations and will demand everything from anyone who dares to uncover it. Southworth, the most popular American novelist of her era, builds her novel around a single secret that seeps through decades like poison through water, destroying the innocent and corrupting the guilty alike. Marguerite must choose between the safety of comfortable ignorance and the terrifying liberation of knowing the truth about her past, her family, and the man she is beginning to love. The story spans from the twilight of Washington's presidency through the burning of Washington, yet history is merely weather outside the window. What matters is the war inside these rooms, where pride and passion collide with consequences that echo across generations. For readers who crave romance with teeth, heroines who think before they leap, and the particular pleasure of watching a carefully constructed life crumble.
