The Magpie Lord

Lucien Vaudrey spent twenty years in exile in Shanghai and had no plan to return to England. Then his father and his brother die, and he becomes the Earl of Crane, a title that brings his family's enemies down on him along with the estate.

Soon after he arrives, Lucien is seized by urges to kill himself that have no natural cause. Someone has cursed him, and that person intends to see it through.

Stephen Day is a justiciar, a working magician who polices the supernatural side of Victorian England. He has his own reasons to despise the Vaudrey name. Lifting the immediate curse is easy for him, but the plot behind it runs deeper and aims at Lucien's life.

The book pairs an enemies-to-lovers romance with an eerie mystery, in a Victorian society where magic lies just under the surface of polite manners. It opens the A Charm of Magpies trilogy. As the conspiracy tightens, Stephen feels a dangerous pull toward the man he came to hate.