The children are too quiet. The doctor is too charming. And the handyman is not who he seems.
Transylvania, 1847. The road through the Carpathian mountains had warnings enough—the storm, the broken carriage wheel, the superstitious driver who abandoned them at the washed-out bridge. But with her companion injured and Castle Negru the only shelter for miles, Fiona Foster has no choice but to seek refuge within its walls of black stone.
A widow and nurse of independent means, Fiona expects to stay one night, see to her companion's injury, and continue on their way. Instead she finds herself stranded at an eerie orphanage where the children move with uncanny precision, speak in identical flat tones, and look at her with eyes too empty for their age. The castle's physician offers easy reassurances. Fiona is not certain she believes him.
The man she cannot place is Nicholas, the castle's handyman, too educated for his position, too watchful for a man with nothing to hide, and here for reasons of his own that he keeps as close as the castle's hidden passages.
The longer she remains, the more she begins to wonder whether the castle's haunting strangeness is real or imagined or something else altogether. But Castle Negru does not surrender its secrets easily, and if she cannot find the truth before someone decides she knows too much, she may not leave at all.
Secrets of Castle Negru is a full-length companion to the Love's Journey series and a complete standalone story. For series readers, this story falls chronologically after Light of a Nile Moon.
