A Victorian Gothic Paranormal Romance Novella by Briar Somerset.

Its novel-length sequel, CHÂTEAU VALMONT AND AN INHERITANCE OF THIRST, releases on print and KU on September 15, and is coming to duet multicast audio soon.

In a town where health is currency and longing is lure, a reluctant investigator and seamstress must uncover whether hunger will anchor a man already slipping into the dark.

Behind the decrepit doors of an infirmary said to offer miraculous cures to London's ailing elite, people are vanishing. Private Investigator and estranged heir to French aristocracy Jacques Valmont is summoned across the channel to sleuth, despite the lingering sickness of his own—one of grief that stirs in his blood and shadows his mind.

Amidst the fog and fever, he finds an unlikely ally in Annie, the quick-witted seamstress working next door to Beecham's Infirmary, whose presence seems to quiet the storm inside him. When she suggests the only way to breach the infirmary's guarded walls is becoming a patient himself, Annie's grandmother warns them both of curses that fester with longing. Unnatural aches that transform a person entirely, if not quelled.

As Jacques nears the truth, desire and dread twist together. Annie may be the last tether holding him to his humanity—or the final thread that unravels it.