Splendid Torment — Natasha Peters

In a city teeming with intrigue and depravity, the exquisite passion of two young lovers is doomed to destruction! Venice -- A city of beauty, of unbridled sensuality, of ceaseless mystery. A city in the late 18th century where a dying aristocracy dances madly to the alst chords of Carnival. A city whose Fosca Loredan toys with men's hearts as easily as gondolas glide through the canals... Fosca -- so magnificent, so untamed, so willful that not even her husband, the powerful Alessandro, leader of the aristocracy, can bring a halt to her outrageous behavior. She laughs in the face of convention, sneers at propriety, rejoices when she brings shame upon the mighty house of Loredan. And then into her life comes a man with a will as fierce as her own, with passions and fires as deep and all-consuming as her own. Raf Loepardi -- leader of the revolutionary forces, and Alessandro's deadliest enemy. For the first time in her life, Fosca learns that love is not a game but a hunger, a need, a raging desire. Fosca, her lover, her husband -- a triangle of emotional torment and sweet pleasures that could happen only in the treacherous, the beautiful, the immoral city of Venice.