The Order

The Oldest Order The alchemical stone lay hidden for centuries. Even its purpose had been forgotten. The blood surrounding its discover almost a millennium earlier had long since grown black and hardened about it. Fleeing an arranged marriage, Mairéad Christabel Donaghmore finds refuge in a brooding, ancient castle in the Scottish highlands. Once a perceptory of l'Ordre d'Fe, now a retreat for the well-heeled and powerful of London, it whispers of old money and older gods. In the days after her arrival, it comes to shriek of death. One by one, each of its inhabitants is found bizarrely murdered. In the hidden world of a Victorian secret society, Mairéad learns of a mystery older than the castle itself, and of a conspiracy tangled byond her imagination. Suddenly imprisoned in a world unchanged since the middle ages, she struggles to unravel the final deadly secret of The Order.