Phantom Fortune, a Novel
1883
At a glittering London dinner party, Lady Maulevrier makes her entrance into a room thick with whispers. Her husband, former Governor of Madras, has returned to England in disgrace, his reputation in ruins. Yet she refuses to collapse under the weight of his scandal. With ice in her veins and steel in her smile, she works the room, daring anyone to look down on her. M. E. Braddon, the sensation novelist who scandalized Victorian England with "Lady Audley's Secret," turns her sharp eye to the deadly serious game of social survival. This is a novel about the masks women must wear, the calculations they must make, and the performances that pass for respectability. Lady Maulevrier is no innocent victim of circumstance; she's a player who understands the rules of a world designed to destroy women like her. The novel dissects Victorian society's cruel arithmetic: a husband's sins can ruin a wife, but a clever woman might yet turn the equations in her favor.
