A Private Affair

By: Helen Ashford

Narrated by: Virtual Voice

Paris, 1890. One city, two worlds—where a private affair becomes public knowledge.

Sir Edward Hastings, an English aristocrat weary of duty and drowning in ennui, retreats to the glamour and shadows of Belle Époque Paris. There, beneath the gaslamps and golden salons, he encounters a woman who unsettles him more than he dares admit: Louisa Avigny, a gifted seamstress with quiet strength, haunting beauty, and a past stitched with sorrow.

Louisa has known loss, solitude, and the hard edges of survival. Widowed and alone, she makes her living by the precision of her needle and the dignity of her silence—until a chance meeting on Pont Neuf leads to an invitation neither of them expected.

Drawn together by mutual need and the ache of loneliness, Edward and Louisa begin a private affair—one that defies the rigid lines of class, country, and custom. As the city stirs around them with art, desire, and revolution, their connection deepens into something that may be love…or may be too dangerous to last.

From the elegant salons of the Hôtel Scribe to the cramped attic workrooms of Rue de la Paix, A Private Affair is a story of forbidden attraction, personal transformation, and the choices that shape a lifetime. Richly atmospheric and emotionally resonant, this historical novel explores what happens when a man who has everything meets a woman who refuses to be bought—and both are changed forever.