Pauline

A clerical error sends attorney Charles Gordon Curtiss to a small town a day late, and straight into the arms of Constance Stuart. Their courtship is brief, their wedding hasty, their future seemingly bright. But on the very day after their marriage, before Curtiss can bring his bride to their new home, Constance encounters a young woman named Pauline in the street. What Pauline whispers to her in that single meeting unravels everything: the life Curtiss has built, the woman he thought he married, and the secret that will shadow them all for years to come. Pansy constructs her Victorian moral drama with the precision of a court case, each character's virtue or failing weighed on an unforgiving scale. The novel asks what happens when truth collides with love, and whether some revelations destroy and others redeem. For readers who savor the slow burn of 19th-century domestic suspense, where a single conversation can reshape every life in its path.