The Spirit Stone (A Certain State Of Marriage #6)

The Spirit Stone

Used and discarded by the man she’d been promised to, and betrayed by her family, Estelle’s life is forfeited when she is thrown towards the arms of Death. But Fate intervened, using Sir Gabriel Horsham as the tool to lift the near-lifeless woman from the cold waters, and take her back to Avaley, his ancestral home. Once secure in the ancient manor house, Estelle awaits the birth of her unwanted child, and her twenty-first birthday, when she will gain the means to achieve an independent future. But even this knowledge can’t lift the dark depression threatening to overwhelm her, and only the connection she now feels towards her host has the power to tear Estelle away from thoughts of Death.
Sir Gabriel’s life has had its share of tragedy, for he has witnessed the deaths of his parents and his siblings, and lost the lady he was betrothed to when he returned home from war as a young man with the unsightly addition of a scarred visage. Since that time he’s chosen to live a mainly lonely existence on his country estate, which borders the wild Yorkshire moors. But right from the first, Estelle awoke his protective instincts, and the more time Sir Gabriel spends with his lovely guest, the less he’s able to face the thought of a future without her. In desperation he offers Estelle a marriage of convenience, never dreaming she could ever come to feel more than friendship and affection for him.
Sara has lived to regret her foolish decisions and actions fifteen years before, and despite her acknowledged beauty, she can find no real worth in herself in the eyes of men. Her husband treats her with placid tolerance at the best, and seemingly cold indifference at the worst, and Sara has played too long this game to know how to end it. But her return to Yorkshire stirs up more than memories of her youth, finally opening her eyes to the bitterest of truths, and forcing decisions that could make or break her future.
And Sara isn’t the only one to return to Yorkshire that year, awakening the chill mists and dark spirits of the moors. For some things were left unfinished before, but now will be brought to a close around the Spirit Stone.



‘The Spirit Stone’ is an Eighteenth century romance with shades of darkness.