Amelia never meant to fall in love with someone she could never have . . .

Night’s Bloom continues the story of the Hampton sisters of Salem, Massachusetts, Eleanor and Amelia, in Paris, where the young Napoleon Bonaparte is about to be crowned emperor. What to do about the problem of Amelia has occupied the brand new McCallister family during their summer sojourn in France. With her hungry intellect, her Yankee stubbornness and a spirit far too free, Amelia is a handful. Worse, Eleanor is troubled by the discovery of her sister’s painful adolescent love for her husband Isaac’s closest friend, the elegant French diplomat François Déguerre, a man entirely unsuitable.

François never meant to fall in love with a willful, hoydenish American savage . . .

Hoping to gift her with some polish and maturity, Eleanor enrolls her sister in the Vevay Academy, a prestigious school for the daughters of princes and presidents. But when the idealistic American is sucked into the dangerous world of French politics, it is left to an exasperated François to rescue Amelia from an ugly riot on the Esplanade des Invalides. It will lead to a single night of seduction that changes the course of their lives, and it will end, across an ocean and a continent, in a steadfast love that changes the course of empires.