Has their pact bred only a great friendship-or has it, without either of them quite noticing, given rise to a great love?Review“Soul-searing, heartrending, and intensely romantic, this late Victorian historical takes the classic marriage-of-convenience theme to a refreshing new level, making effective use of alternating time periods, as the characters struggle to reconcile duty and loyalty with personal desire and to understand what love really is-and is not. Her husband, who has become her very best friend, but nothing more.Her husband, who plans to reunite with his childhood sweetheart, the beautiful and newly widowed Isabella, as soon as he has honored the pact with his wife.As the hour they truly become husband-and-wife draws near, both Millie and Fitzhugh must face the truth in their hearts.

Somehow Millie has fallen head over heels in love with her husband. After which, they will lead separate lives.It is a most sensible arrangement. Because of her youth, they have agreed to wait eight years before consummating the marriage-and then, only to beget an heir. And in return, the Earl Fitzhugh receives the benefit of her vast wealth, saving his family from bankruptcy. She gets to be a Countess by marrying an impoverished Earl. Millicent understands the terms of her arranged marriage all too well. Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon meets Downton Abbey, this remarkable tale of friendship, danger, and coming of age will stay with you long after you have finished the last page. They do not know it yet, but their lives are already inextricably bound together, and will collide one fateful night when they least expect it. He dreams of escaping to find his beloved friend-but the friend is in China, ten thousand miles away.

Torn from his family, he becomes the hostage of a urbanely sadistic uncle.

Half a world away in England, a young boy's idyllic summer on the Sussex downs implodes with the firing of a single bullet. What future is there for such a girl? But a mysterious figure steps forward and offers to instruct her in the highest forms of martial arts-a path to a life of strength and independence. In the waning days of the last dynasty, in a quiet, beautiful corner of imperial Peking, a young girl's blissful ignorance is shattered when she learns that she is the illegitimate daughter of an English adventurer and a Chinese courtesan.

Magnolia sword vbook cover