From the unquenched embers of smoldering desire… Melissa Vane braves cruel humiliation in a desperate attempt to assure the future of her family name. Dark-skinned, blue-eyed Seth Vane, her husband and rightful heir to the vast Vane plantation, can never be sure when his determined hold might be challenged. Sir Alan Lonsdale, though himself a half-caste, ruthlessly takes up the slave trade. And a young woman surrenders her innocence to a band of vengeful fugitives. Here is fiction at its richest and most compelling -- an engrossing saga of love, adventure, and unbridled passions among the second generation of three great families; a novel that throbs with the raw emotion of a proud, passion-swept land.