Summary
In a crumbling Swiss keep where the wind howls through cracked stone, John B. Smart—ink-stained, fame-weary, and hungry for hush—barters hard currency for echoing corridors and a silence thick enough to carve into chapters. Instead of solitude he inherits a clandestine tableau: Aline, heiress turned fugitive, cradling an infant whose lullaby is the thud of her fugitive heart. She is a wraith of silk and bruises, her fortune devoured by Count Tarnowsky—black-eyed gambler, tyrant, collector of both chips and women—who has wrested their child through the cold arithmetic of courts. Smart, scribbler turned inadvertent paladin, thrashes the noble parasite, bolts him in the oubliette, and bolts across moon-glazed snow toward Italy’s promise while sleigh-bells clang like alarmed cymbals. Tarnowsky slips his chains, gallops in murderous pursuit, but the border is a blade that severs hunter from prey; Aline, thawing in the alpine sunrise, vows to re-write her life as Mrs. Smart.
Synopsis
John B. Smart, an American author in search of solitude and an atmosphere for a new story, purchases an old castle in Switzerland. Upon moving in, he discovers a beautiful woman hiding with a baby in the east tower. She tells him that she is Aline, the daughter of an American millionaire and the divorced wife of Count Tarnowsky, who has squandered her money and treated her brutally and to whom the courts have awarded their child. The count comes to the castle and confronts Smart, who thrashes him soundly and has him thrown into the dungeon. Smart then takes Aline and her child on a sleigh and speeds to the Italian border. The count escapes and pursues them, but they safely cross the border and Aline consents to be Smart's wife.
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