The Dark Affair

by Maire Claremont

The Dark Affair is a dark historical that doesn’t involve ballrooms or ratafia, and features themes of addiction and madness. I’d say it’s what would happen if Bellatrix Lestrange started writing a historical romance and then Hermione finished it for her.

Margaret Cassidy is a former noblewoman, now impoverished due to the Irish famine. Her parents are dead, her brother has fallen onto the wrong side of the law, and her world is collapsing. When the father of Lord James Stanhope, Viscount Powers, approaches her with a job in exchange for saving her brother, she takes it out of desperation. Powers is in an asylum–he became addicted to opium and descended into “madness” (grief and drug-fueled outbursts) after the death of his wife and daughter. Margaret is to marry Powers, but act predominately as his nurse, with the understanding that at some point they need to have a child in order to secure the family line.

This book started off pretty dark, what with Powers behaving erratically to frightening degrees as he withdraws from opiates and Margaret reflecting on the tragedy that struck her family, but over time it becomes a book about healing and is actually quite comforting.

Margaret was a nurse in Crimea and Has Seen Some Shit, so she’s prepared to deal with Powers. They’ve both suffered incredible loss, and they find healing by working through their grief together.

I really loved this book. I loved the unusual premise, I loved the transformation of both characters, and I loved that the characters talked about and dealt with things that many historicals overlook. I read it in one late-night sitting, annoying Dewey because I wasn’t going to bed.

If you’re looking for more emotionally gripping stories with comfort and loss set in dark, unexpected places instead of bright ballrooms, you should totally snag this book. It’s a palate cleanser of the best kind.

– Elyse

The Victorian era was full of majestic beauty and scandalous secrets—a time when corsets were the least of a woman’s restrictions, and men could kill or be killed in the name of honor…

Lady Margaret Cassidy left a life of nobility behind in Ireland, forsaking her grieving homeland to aid war-ravaged men in England. Still, she never expected a cruel turn of fate to lock her into an unwanted betrothal with one of her English patients—much less one as broken and dangerous as Viscount Powers.

Wrecked by his tragic past, Powers’ opiate-addled sanity hangs precariously in the balance, leaving him poised to destroy anyone who dares to utter the names of the wife and child he still so deeply mourns. So when he is forced to marry Margaret in exchange for freedom, he is shocked by the desire to earn her trust, her body, and—most alarming of all—her heart….

Historical: European, Romance