She is Claire Clermont—an Englishwoman ahead of her time: a European-educated intellectual, a feminist, a beauty. Byron dedicated poems and verses to her.
He is Yevgraf Komarovsky—a count, an aide-de-camp to Alexander I, a duelist, a gendarme—and, paradoxically, also a writer, author of the famous historical “Notes.”
Detective. 1826. Claire Clermont and Yevgraf Komarovsky become allies in investigating a series of terrible crimes. In the Islavskoe estate, a whole family is brutally murdered—a judicial official, his young daughter, and the servant. And this is only one link in the chain of bloody events that shook the Odintsovo district many years ago, connected with the name of the person whom the peasants call the Dark One.
Trying to uncover the dark mystical secrets of the past and the cruel murders, facing danger, taking risks, and not backing down, they move forward toward the truth. Two charismatic antagonists—two absolute opposites—drawn together by the force of feelings that flare up between them...