Financially straitened and on the path to spinsterhood Venetia Milton thought her stay at the remote ramshackle Arcane House would be a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to engineer her own ravishment She was there to photograph the artifacts collected by a highly secretive organization founded two centuries earlier by an alchemist And the alchemists descendant-her employer Gabriel Jones-has the eyes of a sorcerer But despite Venetias intent to seduce Mr Jones and move on she is shattered upon her return home to read in the press of his violent demise Using the sizable fee Mr Jones paid her Venetia establishes a new life opening a gallery in London Of course posing as a respectable widow makes it easier to do business so-in a private tribute to her lost only lover-she assumes the identity of Mrs Jones Her romantic whim however will cause unexpected trouble For one thing Mr Jones is about to stride living and breathing back into Venetias life And the two share more than a passionate memory-indeed they are bonded by a highly unusual sort of vision one that goes far beyond Venetias abilities as a photographer They also share a terrible threat-for someone has stolen a centuries-old notebook from Arcane House that contains a formula believed to enhance psychic powers of the kind Gabriel and Venetia possess And the thief wants to know more-even if he must kill the keeper of the Arcane Societys treasures or the photographer who catalogued them to obtain such knowledge.
