Destiny by Sally Beauman

THERE WAS NO REASON ON EARTH
WHY THEY SHOULD EVER HAVE MET...

EDOUARD ... Edouard de Chavigny has known love, loss, disillusionment, and betrayal. Now he is the ruler of a financial empire, a man admired by his friends, feared by his rivals, famed for his ease in attracting women -- and notorious for his ease in leaving him.

HELENE ... Helene Craig was raised in rural Alabama by a romantic British war bride who fostered in her cild dreams of a gentler world. But when Helene's illusions die in the violence of a sultry July afternoon, she vows to become rich, free, and invulnerable -- and some day to exact her revenge.

EDOUARD AND HELENE ... They meet on a Paris street, and their love seems to them undeniable, inevitable. What they cannot know is that the paths that brought them together started not in Paris, not in Alabama, but in London on a night ablaze with Nazi bombs ... and that before them lie years of public glamour and private pain, of unfolding truths and enmeshing lies, of ambitions gained and chances lost.

DESTINY spans three decades -- and worlds as disparate as the decadent villas of Algiers on the eve of revolution ... the South in the early days of civil rights unrest ... the fairy-tale magnificence of a French chateau ... the sheltered mansions of Hollywood. Teeming with a strong and passionate cast of characters, Destiny will mesmerize, beguile, and capture you in its riveting unbreakable spell.

Edouard and Helene. When they met it was more than coincidence. When they fell in love it was more than passion. when they thought they'd lost it all, they should have known they were wrong -- they should have known it was Destiny.

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