Book excerpt: The Black Death has spared Clarendon Abbey, where Audra Travers is a novice. It is the only life she knows. Everything changes when men come from Bredonmere Manor, telling her that, in the wake of the plague’s decimation of her family, she is the sole living heir to her father’s lands. She is no longer Sister Audra, but the Countess of Bredonmere. On her way home, she is halted by a masked man who calls himself Lynx and warns her that nothing will be as she expects when she reaches the manor. Furious at his bold ways that elicit sensations she never has felt before, she vows to keep him from intruding. Even so, Lynx in all his roles at Bredonmere becomes her greatest ally . . . and her greatest temptation. But can learning the truth of the man behind the mask and his true reason to come to her home destroy all she has built—as well as her heart?