Book excerpt: Thomazine was born heiress to the lands and fortune of the Heron dynasty. Orphaned at ten years old, she is raised in a family of cousins, and is romantically involved with her headstrong cousin Francis. But she is already betrothed to another cousin, Dominic, and Francis is banished and imprisoned. Thomazine is forced into a black and loveless wedlock, in the midst of turbulent years of England's Civil War.