Next Big Book Thing: A 3rd Time to Die by George A Bernstein

"No!” A fearsome beast hovered above her, swinging a weapon high above its beaked head.
“Mon Dieu! No! Please, don't hurt...” The thud of heavy blows, the crunching of bones and rending of flesh, continued unabated for many minutes in the otherwise silent glade.

It wasn't until four hours after the last of the hunt had ridden in, two foxes in hand, before it was admitted that something was amiss. A hastily organized search party gave up, finally, three hours into the night.

The entire village was out again at dawn, searching ahorse and afoot for the missing couple. Two hours after sun-up, a hunting horn was sounded from a thick forest glade. The dogs had found their master. Searchers gathered in silent wonder in the small meadow that, sixteen hours before had hosted an idyll of love and passion. The ground was torn, blood and bits of flesh splattered everywhere. Two broken bodies lay heaped together, limbs twisted askew, heads crushed, faces gone, barely recognizable as having once been human.

The huntsmen agreed it was the work of some great beast--mayhaps an angry bear. Had an enraged sow destroyed them while protecting her cubs? Surely a plausible answer. They would hunt down and kill her, if they could.

So two lovers, newly discovered unto each other, died with love and life unfulfilled.
It was a passion that might have lasted an eternity, were it not cut short.
So brutally short.

1845 A.D.

Morgana Quincy’s hazel eyes, shaded by arched, inky eyebrows, squinted against the sun, watching the one-horse coach clatter around a corner before she started down the cobblestone path. Her white parasol, protection against the mid-day sun, draped casually over a slender shoulder. She shook her head, glistening onyx curls swirling and bobbing about her gentle, round-cheeked face. She needed time to clear her mind.

Her father, Jonathan Denton, had immigrated to the Americas only fifty years before, and had distinguished himself as a blockade-runner in this new country's second war with England. Now, thirty years later, he owned a successful shipping business, with six sloops carrying goods to all the major cities of the World.

But a life that should be a cornucopia was not going well. She was a fortunate woman, raised in a warm and loving environment by her father, widowed now these past twelve years. She married eight years past to a handsome young pillar of Philadelphia society, something that should fill her life with joy. William came from one of the oldest families in the city.

At twenty-seven, the major thing missing from paradise was a child, but not for a lack of trying… at least during their first five years together. Sex with her husband… something she shamefully enjoyed… was far less frequent now.

Just last month she discovered the cause: his affair with a sultry, voluptuous singer from a "high class" saloon near the harbor.

How could that bastard do this to her? What to do now? Take revenge? Something not in her nature, but the lure was strong.

They could try to work things out, but did she even care to make the effort? For what? If he pledged penance, would she let him back into her bed? She imagined he would try. She’d begun to suspect William was more enamored with her father’s fortune than her. And despite promises, would he really forsake that sensuous trollop? Nay, nothing good could come of this.

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