Zoé
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Forbidden Love
Beautiful Zoé Bouchard, born into a life of privilege, knows little of the world outside of her small village of Narbonne, France. The product of une petite liaison between her father and his African mistress, Zoé wants only one thing: to maintain the love and adoration showered upon her by her father, an adoration that is shared by her half-sister. However, Zoé’s stepmother, jealous of those affections, has long resented having to raise a mulatto alongside her own daughter, Marianne, in French society.
Marianne at sixteen, the younger by two years, has reached the age to marry, and must be wed first. Thus the girls are ushered from their village and presented to the mysterious, philandering Comte Julien La Roque de Toulouse. Though Zoé fears life under her stepmother’s tyranny without Marianne, she embarks, supportively, on what she believes to be a new beginning in their lives.
The Count immediately takes a shine to the tawny brown demoiselle who stands in her fair sister’s shadow. Discovering her love for poetry and preying upon her naïveté, he lures Zoé to his chamber with the promise of friendship and the exchange of poems. Soon Zoé is seduced by a surprising glimpse of the man behind the title. She finds herself deep in a passionate liaison, one that is well beyond her youthful understanding.
Desperate to cover her foolish lapse in judgment, Zoé races against time to keep the affair a secret. But when the truth is discovered by her cruel stepmother, Zoé’s hopes of rescue by her father cannot be realized, and she is forced into a bitter bargain. She must secure her sister’s betrothal by offering herself to the Count as a consolation prize.
Despite everything, Zoé believes in the Count’s feelings for her and begs him to legitimize their union. But fear, prejudice and cowardice prevent him from doing so. She is soon thrown into a life of certain misfortune. Her only salvation is to trust the one person who has created the labyrinth of betrayal and tragedy she cannot seem to escape.
"Education: that which reveals to the wise, and conceals from the stupid, the vast limits of their knowledge." by Mark Twain
