Dragonmede — Rona Randall

A brilliant and terrifying Gothic, DRAGONMEDE begins in London in the late 1800's, a time when nobility was the golden key that opened all doors. To Eustacia Rochdale, life was exciting, if uncertain. Her mother, beautiful and talented, courted the rich and titled who came to her Bloomsbury home to gamble and relax.

Luella always managed to win enough from her guests to support herself comfortably, but she was determined that her daughter achieve the respectable upper-class marriage that she herself could never attain.

When Eustacia meets Julian Kershaw--heir to Dragonmede, a title, and a family fortune--Luella is delighted. Desperately gambling on the young man's unskilled passion for cards and his obvious attraction toward Eustacia, she succeeds in arranging their engagement.

Eustacia arrives at Dragonmede as Julian's new bride, unaware of her mother's manipulations. She is met with hostility and suspicion, and when Julian himself becomes cold and withdrawn, she begins to wonder if the various accidents occurring since her arrival are not indeed attempts on her life.