A Falling Star

Sir Alexander St Barbe is the black sheep of the St Barbe family… The only son of the late Nathaniel St Barbe, he has spent the last several years in exile in Holland, living a dissolute and debauched life far from his well-respected family in England. Now, however, he has returned to Somerset to claim Wintercombe as his inheritance — but his arrival is greeted with trepidation and foreboding. Bitter quarrels break out on his first night home and soon, the old fires of family passions and religious contention are raging. Even Alex’s aunt Silence Hellier, herself once mistress of Wintercombe,…