A dying father’s plea sends seventeen-year-old Cairstin Blackwood toward a marriage of desperation—and into a nightmare she may not survive. 

 

Northern England, 1846: leaving her beloved village of Appleby to work as a dressmaker in Penrith, Cairstin hopes to save her widowed mother and sister from ruin, but the town offers more peril than promise. Jealous rivals, a vicar with unsettling influence, and a suitor whose polished charm hides something far more sinister soon close in around her. 

 

With poverty standing between her and the man she truly loves, Cairstin is drawn into a courtship that seems to offer salvation, only to discover after the wedding that her husband’s mask conceals a cruel and violent nature. 

 

As danger mounts and escape seems impossible, Cairstin must fight for her family, her freedom, and her very life.