Prologue

“I love you.”

Those words echo in my head for what seems like the first and yet thousandth time.  Those words said in between the panting breaths of the most beautiful dying man in existence.

But this isn’t how we should start. No, we should enter into this story in, if not the beginning, then the beginning of the first end. The night I died . . . for the first time.

Chapter І

“Jezebel, behind you!”

I swung around, laughing as I was caught around the waist and lifted up, my motion carrying both my captor and I into a full turn. At nineteen years old, I may not have been the most discreet or polite young woman, but I did know how to have fun.

That morning, I’d obliged my aunt and let her steer me from house to house, making calls before the ball scheduled for that night. She’d wanted me to know exactly whom would be there; which eligible bachelors and the women who would be after them.

We were at the house of the distinguished Callew family for tea, them being the lucky last ones on my aunt’s extensive list. The Callew family was fabulously wealthy and not afraid to show it; but they were elegant about it.

Jonathon, the man who possessed the arms I was trapped in, was their second son. He was beautiful, to be sure, but not quite as sharp as anyone had hoped he would be. Then, though, Jonathon had been the most eligible bachelor in London for the past two years running.

The eldest Callew son was the most mysterious man that had been gossiped about in the past hundred years. His name, even, had a stirring ring to it. Kearan had left London at the age of ten, to attend a boarding school in a place nobody had been informed of. Rumours of him and his travels trickled into London ten years later, leaving everyone, including me, to wonder what kind of man he had turned out to be.

“Jezebel? Are you alright?” Jonathon’s brusque tone snapped me out of my daze. I tossed my head, shaking off the questioning thoughts of an inexplicable man. I sent a smile to Jonathon.

“Of course I’m alright. Did you think I was fragile enough to break just from a bit of running?”