Sharon Robards

Playing with Fire Sharon Robards

From the bestselling author of A Woman Transported comes a story of the House of Guelph (Hanover) when the English throne lingered at a far distance like a dim star.

Seventeenth century Germany, France and England, are places where love takes a backseat to power - power over people and places. Beautiful Eléonore is deeply in love with George William, heir of a German duchy, and he with her. But he hides a secret that makes a legal marriage impossible.

George William's younger brother, Ernest, and his own bride are desperate to block George William's marriage. If George William never has any male heirs by a legal marriage, then Ernest's sons will inherit George William's lands and holdings. There are other brothers wanting land too. The brothers' plots against each other are only half of it. King Louis XIV of France has designs on German territory and aims to take it by force.

Courtesans, all the fashion in France, now sprout like mushrooms in a German forest. None is more ambitious than Klara, forced to return to her homeland from the Court of King Louis. Her version of love is monetary.

The layered schemes of the upper crust make life treacherous for their powerless offspring, especially young Sophia Dorothea, who must smother her heart's yearnings and yield to the cold commands of her elders or suffer serious consequences.

Playing with Fire weaves together the threads of greed, lust, honour and brutality at the dawn of the Industrial age.