PROLOGUE – Paris 1793

        Losing your memory at the best of times was bad enough. The sticky cobblestones in the Place de la Revolution, where tumbrels trundled, drums beat and crowds bayed, was the worst.

       “Jesus Christ, where the hell’s LeBoeuf?

He swore he’d get her out of here.” Somewhere to his bewildered left, Gil Wryson’s booted feet ground to a halt. His voice cut through the crowd like shattered glass.   “What the bloody hell are we meant to do now?”

       “Montclair, eh? Well? Well? Fancy seeing you here, you treacherous piece of shit. Your little love bird today. You tomorrow.” He doubled over the iron fist that sank into the pit of his stomach, his scuffed high-sided boots slithering in the sticky, congealing mess beneath them.

SHEY …. Cos to answer your question, folks would probably have eaten you lot in Paris in 1793.

So how about you shut up? And start again while you’re about it????

PROLOGUE – Paris 1793

   Losing your memory at the best of times was bad enough. The sticky cobblestones in the Place de la Revolution, where tumbrels trundled, drums beat and crowds bayed, was the worst.

 “Jesus Christ, where the hell’s LeBoeuf?

PROLOGUE – Paris 1793

Losing your memory at the best of times was bad enough. The sticky cobblestones in the Place de la Revolution, where tumbrels trundled, drums beat and crowds bayed, was the worst.

 “Jesus Christ, where the hell’s LeBoeuf?

He swore he’d get her out of here.” Somewhere to his bewildered left, Gil Wryson’s booted feet ground to a halt. His voice cut through the crowd like shattered glass.   “What the bloody hell are we meant to do now?

          “Montclair, eh? Well? Well? Fancy seeing you here, you treacherous piece of shit. Your little love bird today. You tomorrow.” He doubled over the iron fist that sank into the pit of his stomach, his scuffed high-sided boots slithering in the sticky, congealing mess beneath them.

Always going to fail.

       The plan was always going to fail. From the second he and Gil Wryson had hatched it, laid out their gold, in a tortured city where the streets ran with blood and one wrong move was death, it had been doomed. Or she wouldn’t be standing there, barefoot, her auburn hair turbaned in white, beneath the cathedral that towered to a searing blue sky.  Except it wasn’t a cathedral. Any more than the row of soldiers standing like skittles, were there to protect her, the waiting tumbrel, to take her home, the drums hammering out a tattoo with his heartbeat, a serenade.

        London, with its smells of old curiosity shops, clatter of carriage wheels, its night ladies prowling mysterious cobblestoned mews, didn’t beckon, despite his  promise they were going home. They were going home, together.

      Now, when he most needed to think if there was some way, of freezing time, of pulling her from that platform, of grabbing a musket from one of the soldiers and ending this agony, he couldn’t. 

He couldn’t do anything except swallow the searing agony in his     gut and tug his hat off his sweating head. It seemed respectful somehow and respect was as much as he could offer her now.

         Dover.

        His life. His love. The woman he’d promised to save. Last night, in that rank, candle-less cell, death hadn’t just looked at him, through bars only it could squeeze through, hadn’t just laughed, it had spat in his face.  Did he really think he could somehow better what the Fates intended?

        As every whispered prayer he’d ever known died on his lips, the blade flashed down. The day’s wine for the cheering mob sprayed across his face.

        Dover.

       My life. My love.

       Let me forget you ever lived . . .

Let me die if I cease to remember you …

Despite stealing other people’s houses, clothes, food, money, identities and children, Lady Eternity Jones draws the line at thieving hearts.  Once she swore never to forget her first love.  Now she has, her memories are of one thing only. Her abusive, murderous husband.  So if survival means suffering a cocky, darkly tortured mess of a man in ‘her’ home, in order to get her hands on his secrets, she’ll do it.

It’s a lot more than maybe. There’s no maybe with a corpse …

But Gil Wryson isn’t the only one being hunted. When the race is against time and time is running out,he needs her to help him remember. But does she need him to help her forget?