In the glittering, dangerous world of Louis XV's France, where a king's favor can elevate or destroy in an instant, Claude de Mailly finds himself trapped in an impossible passion. His cousin, the Duchess de Châteauroux, holds the court captive with her beauty and wit, but she belongs to the King. As Claude navigates the treacherous waters of eighteenth-century French nobility, every whispered confession at the Café Procope becomes a gamble, every stolen glance a potential scandal. Margaret Horton Potter renders the ancien régime with sensuous precision: the rain on the Parisian streets, the calculating glitter of court gatherings, the delicate warfare of rival factions all comingling in a story about what happens when desire and duty point in opposite directions. This is historical romance at its most psychologically acute, a portrait of a world where love is strategy and the heart is a weapon one wields at considerable peril.
