Madness — Sorcha MacMurrough

Freedom and love, or death…

Gabrielle Howell enters the hellish asylum of Bedlam in London when her sister Lucinda is committed as insane by her husband the Earl of Oxnard.

During a riot at the asylum, Gabrielle is rescued by a handsome inmate known only as Simon, who seems to make an awful lot of sense for someone supposedly deranged.

Drugged and suffering from a mysterious malady, Simon cannot remember his past. All his records seem to indicate he is a deadly killer incarcerated by his prominent family.

But the more Gabrielle gets to know the fiercely intelligent and gentle man, the more she has her doubts that this could ever be true. Simon is principled, kind, heroic and certainly no murderer. As she gets to know him, he transforms from loyal ally to friend, from friend to the most magnificent lover. The passion that sparks between them is like nothing she has ever known, heady and addictive. Gabriele grows more and more determined to save him no matter what her cousin or friends accuse him of.

Simon isn't sure if the gorgeous woman he has held in his arms is real, or a figment of his opium-addled brain. All he knows is, it's true love, a gift from the gods he will never give up, except in death.

Simon refuses to be kept a prisoner any longer by the puppetmasters who have been pulling his strings ever since the war with Napoleon started. Trusting in his new-found love Gabrielle, Simon is willing to risk everything to defeat his captors, and the opium addiction they have caused by drugging him to keep him cooperative.

Simon wages an heroic struggle to defeat his addiction so that he can escape from Bedlam and be worthy of Gabrielle's love. But can he ever manage to come out of the shadows to live a normal life once more?

Gabrielle begins to believe the impossible: that she can save Simon before it's too late. In a bold and daring move, she risks everything to heal Simon and rescue him from the living hell he has been consigned to.

Their love deepens, but the danger soon starts to close in all around them. Simon's employer tries to use him as a pawn one more time as European power politics shift once more. Napoleon still dreams of glory and is determined to return from exile no matter what the price. Will allowing themselves to love one other prove to be Gabrielle and Simon's salvation, or sheer madness?