Clara & Jack · Book 2
Dark Romance · Historical
The Executioner and the Innocent
He was meant to behead her. He married her instead.
Three women bound to the scaffold. The executioner may claim one as his bride. Clara is innocent—and he knows it.
Clara, a merchant’s daughter who speaks three languages, is the princess’s closest confidante—until the queen hands her to an aging, hard-drinking officer. On their wedding night he presses a sealed letter into her hands: “Speak of this to no one.” By dawn he’s dead, and Clara is in the dungeon, charged as an accomplice to high treason.
Jack is the city’s executioner. Streets fall silent when he passes. By day he takes heads; by night he breaks fevers. He knows Clara has done nothing. Yet in the interrogation chamber he holds a glowing iron to her face—never once touching her—until she signs her own death warrant.
One week after Easter, three condemned women stand on the scaffold. The king has granted his executioner the right to wed one of them. Jack beheads two. Over the third, his blade sweeps past.
In the executioner’s house by the stream, Clara flinches from the hands that wielded the sword—the same hands that now rub salve into her raw wrists. Slowly she discovers what those hands awaken in her: a rope, a single word that ends everything, a closeness no one at court must ever see. But up at the castle, someone hasn’t forgotten the letter.
The executioner made his choice. Now it’s hers.
Scaffold to marriage · Forced marriage to true love · The feared executioner who heals · Court intrigue and a sealed secret · Surrender with a word that stops everything · Guaranteed happy ending
🌶️🌶️🌶️ Dark, sensual, and no fade to black: a dark historical romance for readers 18+. Contains explicit scenes, executions, torture, and violence.