In a country at war, a secret inheritance reveals a dark conspiracy ... On a sunlit afternoon in seventeenth-century Dorset, a young girl falls in love with a stranger. But when her Puritan brother tries to force her into an unbearable marriage she flees, taking with her only the gift left to her by her unknown father, a gold pendant sealed by an engraving of an axe, and the words: St Matthew. One of four intricately wrought seals - each holding a secret within - it can, when combined with the other three, bring great wealth and power. This power is her true inheritance - but it's a perilous legacy others will kill for ...

The civil war that is tearing England asunder in the year 1643 has not yet touched Dorcas Slythe, a secretly rebellious young Puritan woman living in the countryside south of London. She aches to escape the safe, pious tyranny of her father--and the opportunity appears with the arrival of Toby Lazender, dashing scion of a powerful royalist family, who awakens her to her passionate destiny. Her adventure truly begins with the discovery of an intricately wrought gold seal--one of four that, when joined, will reveal a great secret. Suddenly grave danger lies before her--not from Cromwell's advancing armies, but from relentless enemies who covet the great treasure to which she now holds the key.

The streets of Paris run bloodred--while in England, the noble Lazenders hide from history's violent storm behind the walls of their opulent "little kingdom." But Toby Lazender, the family's heir, is hunting the brutal murderers of the woman he loved in revolution-torn France, leaving Lazen Castle vulnerable to secret cabal of assassins conspiring to bring the chaos across the channel. There is an obstacle, however, to the Fallen Angels' dark plan: Toby's sister, Lady Campion Lazender. Drawn by a mysterious horseman into a realm of fascination and desire, she sees treachery everywhere--and her heart could be leading her to destruction . . . by the hand of the only man she dares to trust.