Two artists, Fred and Henry,  immersed in the Pre-Raphaelite art movement, with its yearning for romantic escape from the materialism of Victorian society.  Two men deeply in love with their beautiful models.  But every heart hides a secret and both couples have put certain shameful events behind them, events that, if exposed, could threaten their blissful new life. The Crimson Bed, a family heirloom passed down through the female blood line since Elizabethan times, brings with it ancestral secrets that will eventually affect Fred leading him into the darkness of London slums and a very different world to that of his peaceful home. Passions escalate as he becomes increasingly jealous of his wife’s closeness to her handsome godfather, Lord Percy Dillinger, and when shocking truths finally come to light, their lives will never be the same again . . .

Adult Sexual scenes

The Crimson Bed created by Loretta Proctor an eGlobal Creative Publishing signed author.

The Crimson Bed

The wedding date was now set for January. As the time approached, Fred began to have trouble sleeping at night. He thought of Ellie constantly, his heart swelling with longing to be with her forever, master in his own home, no longer subordinate to his parents and their ideas. He was now twenty-eight years old and realised that he should have cleared out long ago, taken his own chambers like Henry, Gabriel Rossetti, Johnnie Millais and the others. Lazy habit and a marked disinclination for work had kept him at home living on the comfortable allowance his father gave him, plus some handouts from his mother when his debts began to pile too perilously high.


The memory of Bessie still clouded his glorious horizon. He had pushed it all to the back of his mind and intended it to remain there but it was not to be. The other day, his mother had called him over to her as he was passing the little back parlour.  She sat as always, spread out languidly upon a sofa, book in hand. 


Chapter 25: Beatrice Thorpe gives Fred good advice