Barbara, the Valiant — Katheryn Kimbrough

Young, beautiful and bold Barbara Callahan was willing to do anything to escape the tyranny of her plantation-owning father and the nightmare of brutality that already had broken her brother and threatened to do the same to her. When Barbara laid eyes on aging Prentise Phenwick, she saw that this weakest member of the proud Phenwick clan offered her a way out of her helish dilemma.

Thus it was that Barbara said yes when Prentise offered her a devil's bargain in marriage. Barbara agreed to the greatest humiliation a woman could know in order to become his bride - yet worse was yet to come. For Barbara was a Phenwick woman now, haunted by the evil of the Phenwick past, captive of a Phenwick man's warped needs, and led through a labyrinth of passion and intrigue by a lover who flouted every law of God and man as he laid claim to the Phenwick legacy...