Florentine silk merchant Giovanni Pietro d'Angelo and his wife want only to marry their daughters to wealthy men of distinction. But when their son's indiscretion implicates him in a tragic accident, their eldest daughter must pay the price. To buy the silence of Sebastiano Rovere, they must give beautiful Bianca to him in marriage. But Bianca flees this cruel union, and then her husband's shocking murder frees Bianca to love at last...

Dugald Kerr, the laird of Brae Aisir, has lost his male heirs in the raging border wars. His last inheritor is a beautiful headstrong granddaughter known as Mad Maggie. Many are eager to wed Maggie, for with her comes the right to exact tolls at a famous safe passage through the border hills, but the laird announces that any man who can outrun, outride, and outfight Maggie will win her and her inheritance. Young King James II dispatches his cousin...

The lavish, lustful, intrigue-ridden court of Henry VIII of England, and the magnetic, magnificent figure of the King himself, form the vivid backdrop for this captivating novel of a beautiful woman caught in the crosscurrents of history.