The Curse of Maiden Scars - Nicolette Croft

A Yorkshire orphan struggling for opportunity against 18th-century odds reluctantly transforms into a Venetian courtesan during the Empire's last days.

Renna Covert dreams of a world beyond her Yorkshire life shelling cotton. Having an unlikely education, she hopes to be a maid or even a governess one day. On a fateful night, she meets two men from the West India Company with connections to a country estate and a way out of her urchin life. But before taking a position in the estate's scullery, Renna discovers a girl at the local asylum bearing burn scars like those on her back. She uncovers proof that the girl is her sister. But an unexpected foe disrupts her hunt to unearth her family's dark legacy and has Renna committed to the asylum. With her friends' help, Renna escapes to the Venetian Ghetto. Danielle, a former courtesan, takes Renna in, but only under the condition that she trains in the one profession Renna fought to avoid-prostitution. 

Renna's life transforms from an orphaned waif to a lavish courtesan. Although there are freedoms in her new world, Renna detests what she's become and longs for the family she's never known. She reaches her emotional breaking point when she learns of Danielle's aims to sell her into slavery. Having survived with only her wits, opportunity, and a bit of luck, Renna crafts a plan to leave Venice on Carnival night, possibly abandoning the freedom she's gained and the history she's yet to understand. She confronts the fiend behind her family's misfortune in her fight for independence. As Venice concedes to Napoleon in 1797, a life of agency is on the horizon, and Renna's prospects could catapult her out of poverty into an unimaginable future.

THE CURSE OF MAIDEN SCARS is a coming-of-age, women's fiction novel with gothic flair set in the tradition of Victoria Mas' THE MADWOMAN'S BALL, and Sarah Dunant's IN THE COMPANY OF THE COURTESAN, with the sensuality of LADY CHATTERLEY'S LOVER.