Sinners and Shadows (ebook)

Argumento de Sinners and Shadows (ebook)

?Meticulously-researched?warming the hearts of millions of readers.? Historical Novels Review

?Collier has a gift for bringing her characters to life that will keep the reader engrossed until the end? Daily Mail

Sinners and Shadows ? Book Three in the Brothers and Lovers Series

Orphaned at eight and raised by a brutal sadistic brother, nineteen-year-old parlour maid Rhian dreams of meeting a man who will love her and give her a family of her own.

When she is invited to join the Evans family on New Year's Eve 1913, her life is thrown into turmoil.

The youngest Evans' brother, twenty-two year old Joey, confesses he loves her. Handsome, charming Joey has never met a woman who could refuse him anything until Rhian.

Just when her feelings begin to emerge Joey's past overshadows and finally shatters their happiness.

Unable to separate truth from lies, wanting to hurt Joey as deeply as he has her, Rhian turns to her employer, Edward Larch, for solace. Unhappily married, Edward offers her the only position he can, that of his mistress. Her choice is simple and irrevocable - to forgo love, her reputation as a 'respectable girl' and all chance of a settled family life for the sake of financial security. When Europe is plunged into war, even the lives of the people in Tonypandy are affected. But no matter how dangerous the conditions or how many hours she works, she cannot stop thinking about the man she loved who betrayed her - and the problems peace will bring.

He tried to imagine himself sitting in his father's chair opposite Rhian twenty years from now, children lined up on the chairs between them. He shuddered. He was not only tempting fate but wishing his father if not dead, then certainly elsewhere and there was no way that he could ever fill his shoes. He finished his tea, dumped the tea leaves in the pigswill bin, rinsed his cup and saucer in cold water and picked up his jacket ready to go to bed.

He heard the crackle of paper and remembered the envelope Rhian had given him. He removed it from his inside pocket, opened it and withdrew a copy of the photograph he had begged her to give him the first day they had spent together. He smiled, realizing that he hadn't been the only one who thought it was time to move their relationship out of friendship and on to a more intimate footing.

Rhian looked beautiful, but also unattainable. He had the strangest feeling that he was looking at one of the picture postcards that could be bought in any newsagent's or stationers of royalty or film stars. He had never loved anything or anyone as much as he loved her. But whether it was nervousness generated by Tonia's visit or Rhian's uneasiness about his past, he had the strangest premonition that she might never be entirely his.0