Book excerpt: A fabulous debut novel of sensual suspense and one woman's erotic liberation in Victorian England. Lady Georgiana Vernon, daughter of the Earl of Eastley, and Jeremy Staunton, youngest son of a viscount, have an unconventional relationship-at least for the upper crust in 1895. They meet publicly as friends, and privately as lovers. It's an arrangement that allows Georgiana the sexual freedom she desires-and continues to indulge in-as a guest at Penfield, where the most sought-after names in the country gather for Lord Laughlin's annual masquerade ball. Then Georgiana initiates a torrid affair with the sexy landscape architect working at Penfield. She sees it as nothing more than a harmless but pleasurable indulgence. But when the relationship is discovered she becomes the target of increasingly malicious threats. During the night of the masquerade ball, these intimidations will come to a dangerous head, as the men in Georgiana's life reveal their own secret desires.