Prologue

      ‘If you do this for me I shall be yours and all that I own will be at your disposal,’ the woman said. Her pale olive-toned skin looked smooth and soft in the candlelight, her black velvet eyes as dark as night, but lit from within by a silver flame. She was a beautiful woman, sure of her power, and she sensed that he wanted her so badly that he could almost taste his need. The perfume she wore was heavy and had the exotic tang of musk and ambergris, and the jewels around her neck were worth a king’s ransom. She was the daughter of an Indian prince and the granddaughter of an English earl, proud, haughty and vengeful—and the hatred of the man who had spurned her burned deep within her breast. ‘He used me cruelly and deserted me—I want him dead. Only his death will assuage the wrong he has done me...’

      She leaned closer to the man, allowing him to inhale the scent of her body, knowing that she had the power to drive men to near madness in their desire for her. She could have had almost any man she wanted and yet one had eluded her and it was he alone she wanted. He had refused her offer to lie with her, to wed her and live in her palace, had told her that he did not love her—and she felt the bitter pain of his rejection like a snake’s sting. He would learn that he could not walk away from her! In her anger she was lost to all sense of reason. She would make