A Fool and His Money

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.