Never the Twain

Never the Twain: A Twin Tale of Jealousy and Betrayal, Love and Murder. Whitby, England 1890. Whitby is heaving with sailors and where there are sailors there are brothels.Beautiful identical twins April and May are in desperate straits having been abandoned by their actress mother at the tender age of seventeen. With no means of support they have only their looks to fall back on. Yet there are plenty who would help them...at a price. Mrs Velda Jansen, a friend of their mothers and a brothel owner, is one of them. She offers them support and a roof over their beautiful heads,but at a cost. Faced with life on the streets or life in a brothel the twins have little choice but to enter Mrs Jansen's high class establishment. Little do they realise the price of the madam's protection. The twins main asset, besides their looks, is their innocence and Mrs Jansen intends to make money from them in the best way she knows how. The notorious Madam plans selling the twins virginity by auctioning them to the highest bidder. Trapped and with their fate hanging in the balance Captain Edward Driscoll a handsome, wealthy shipping tycoon from Glasgow arrives to save them. When he takes April and May out of the clutches of the Madam and installs them in his mansion in a fashionable area of Glasgow, April suspects he's too good to be true. Have they exchanged one form of slavery for another? April, reluctantly swept up in her twin's secrets and lies unwittingly becomes embroiled in a murderous conspiracy. Is May's jealousy stronger than the twin bond which has always connected them? Find out in this historical, theatrical page turner. Never the Twain : A Gothic Tale of Romance and Murder. 307 pages May has always loved Edward and now she is to have him. The sisters know he can tell them apart but reasons if it is candlelight and he is intoxicated, then he can be tricked. The plan works and May becomes pregnant. May and April return to Whitby to hide her pregnancy. They convince Edward that April is the mother through elaborate plans devised by May. May gives birth to a son and reluctantly gives him up to her sister. Edward finds out he has been duped and gives April an ultimatum; her twin has to go. He suspects May is the one who devised the plan. He forgives April and banishes May. Driven by jealousy May poisons him. When the murders are discovered the authorities do not know which twin to prosecute as they cannot tell them apart and both are confessing to the murder. The day before May is to hang they switch roles and May goes home leaving April to hang for the murder she did not commit. On the same day that April hangs, May smothers her son and kills herself. Before killing herself May sends chocolates poisoned with nicotine to her real mother whom she blames for everything that has happened.