She had to make Nikolai see sense Janine was perfectly happy about her brother Robert's engagement to Lara Nekrassova, but Lara's arrogant brother Count Nikolai had forbidden the marriage with such violence that Janine was ready to fight back. Who did this man think he was, she wondered furiously. Risen from poverty himself, how dared he insult her family by implying that Lara would be marrying beneath her? And then Janine met him and learned the secrets of his past, and found herself falling irrevocably under his powerful spell.