Irish, Catholic and a closeted homosexual? This lad sure doesn’t know how to pick a struggle. When he isn’t delivering mail to residents of Peckham on his safety bike, he’s sat in Leyton Square, watching birds and men, knitting and trying to not think too hard about the handsome face of his aunt’s beau. Quiet, introspective and gentle, this man does not thrive in the industrial jungle of London.
A young widow of means is left alone to face the stark reality of life after the loss of her third husband. Though she has her faithful staff at her side, she has been left in a precarious position as a woman alone in a time when women’s rights were few and the dangers many. Fending off fortune hunters, stone walling a greedy family, avoiding con-artists and navigating the social scene while ignoring nasty rumors are her way of life now. It was a challenge and she was looking forward to seeing how the game played out.
Once considered a hardy, honest man, working odd jobs to provide for himself and his family. Spiralled downwards when his wife died in an accident and even after recovering…He found himself to be lost, taken in by a lowly underworld boss and used as a grunt-for-hire to make ends meet.
The soul of an explorer in the body of a debutante. Deenie is the kind of person who prefers the company of animals to people, the fresh air of the countryside to the stink of the city, and fierce independence to the confines of marriage. Though she was sent to London with the purpose of having her cousin help find her a husband, she has no intention of completing that mission.
Antonio is the oldest child and heir to the noble family of Nicastro from the Duchy of Montferrat. However, he was forced into hiding across the English Channel and ended up in the Grand City of London. He works as a physician in dingy hospitals, bars, and wherever he can under the name Nino Donovan—unable to risk being under watchful eyes.
Stubborn as a mule but harmless as a kitten, Tullio ran away to London seeking fame and fortune beyond the constraints of his family and mentor, only to find that was a much more difficult goal than wealthy Englishmen made it seem. A sculptor and painter, Tullio is in desperate need of money if he doesn’t want to be living in a rat-filled tenement house for his entire life. Commissions would be good, and a rich patron would be even better.
Born the heir to viscountcy, raised to be an anarchist, exiled as a revolutionary, and rehabilitated as a great playwright and radical politician, Gabriel de Rougemont had already gone through enough for three lives, before he was accused of planting a bomb inside a building. Forced to flee France for the second time in his lifetime, he begins his second exile to England with fewer prospects, less money and family support. Sharp and impulsive, yet well-read and well-spoken, Gabriel has a talent both for getting into messes and escaping their consequences. Or had, for his luck might have just run out.
Dot is trying to find her place in the world as a Deaf seamstress. She is precariously balanced between the hearing and Deaf worlds, attempting to manage the wishes of her family to marry a respectable man and her own aspirations.
With a given name as aspirational as “Sterling,” maybe it is no surprise that Kildare clawed his way from his working-class childhood into editor’s chair of a known, if struggling, London weekly. He navigates the Review with a keen mind and sharp eye, and is ruthless about what belongs in the paper and what doesn’t. The owner has insisted upon only truthful reporting, but Sterling knows, too, that the truth isn’t always what sells papers.
Obsession rules in Julian Graves’s life. He thrives on it. He molds his life around it, and when he is without a fixation, he struggles through the constant companion of an aimless inner turmoil.
Treat him well and he will adore you. Treat him badly, bully, tease, or humiliate him, and he will love you, a little too much.
