The Courtship of Byron Blisset

Byron Blisset was the coming man who by stint of hard work and astute business sense has transformed his deceased fathers business, into a thriving international success. In part due to his business connections with the Union Army of the North American states in their war against the Confederate Army of the Southern states. The year is 1862. The civil war is just over a year old and has many battle to fight before it ends and Byron had made more than money out of this conflict he has made powerful enemies, who know him to be more than a businessman, know him to be a spy.
Returning home one Friday evening in mid-autumn he discovers he has two unexpected visitors, awaiting his arrival Lady Adele Egerton a notorious beauty and Mrs. Molly Bridson, unhappily poor and homeless, but an old acquaintance from when he was a young man working in his father's factory and she an employee of his.
Both women are widowed, and both have their reasons for wanting to meet with Byron that evening, Lady Adele Egerton because she has a proposition of marriage, she would like him to consider. Molly because she wants him to care for her and her two daughters, one of whom, she claims is his: a girl of seven or eight.
His usual, predictably boring Friday evening spent at home with his trusted servants, who have cared for him since he was a baby, is transformed, because both women have an ulterior motive for meeting with Byron. One that bodes no good for him and leaves the other dead.
During the night armed and determined robbers break into his house helped by one of the women, their intention not only to rob Byron of the money they believe he keeps in his safe but also kill him on the instructions of their Confederate spy master who has sent an agent to assassinate him. Who has subcontracted the task to them.

So begins a night of robbery, murder and terror that traps Byron, Lady Adele Egerton, Molly Bridson and her two girls in his burning house. But despite they are all in peril one of the women betrays him, but who? This is the question which haunts Byron's mind as he tries to escape the fire and end the threat of murderer he faces, now made more personal when Lady Adele Egerton's lover, Captain Frederikson, discovers Byron has taken her to his bed.
The two women battle it out to seduce and control Byron and both plot against him and each other with accusations of betrayal and double dealing. But one is true to her love the other is not, but which one?