The Power and the Passion — Christina Nicholson

Sweeping from colonial America to the dazzling court of St. James's and the barbaric splendors of St. Petersburg, here are the riveting adventures of Lorna MacMahon, who was pawn and plaything to three monarchs, then risked all to be mistress of her own fate.

Snatched from the safe and sleepy world of her family's Maryland plantation, seventeen-year-old Lorna -- whose surpassing beauty will prove at once her treasure and her tragedy -- is forced into a precipitate shipboard marriage and repeatedly ravished by her cruel captor-turned-husband, Captain James Butler. But Butler's soldier-of-fortune savagery is no match for Lorna's cool-headed strategy. Once in England, using a native wit she never dreamed she possessed and the sensual loveliness she knew she would never lose, Lorna enchants King William, claims her rightful inheritance as the Countess of Morne, and rises to prominence as the richest heiress in the realm.

But the beauty that gave Lorna her freedom now holds mad Peter, Tsar of all the Russians, in its emerald-eyed thrall. Determined to make her his mistress, he gives her to one of his faithful lieutenants. The arranged marriage makes Lorna the Princess Bogoljubov -- and the night Peter claims his droit de seigneur the Tsar's accomplished lovemaking and fabulous dimensions make her completely a woman.

A king's mistress, however, is never queen of her destiny, and pursuing Peter across Europe, Lorna is forced to shelter in the byzantine court of Augustus, King of Poland, to give birth to the Tsar's bastard son. Bound by no law beyond his own lust, the lecherous Augustus strives to turn Poland's prize into Russia's loss and presses his ardent suit on an unwilling Lorna.

Stalked by a trio of monarchs who have sworn to possess her, still dreaming of a gentler life and of a first tender love wrested from her, Lorna eludes every snare set for her to emerge a woman beyond royal barter.

Alive with the unbridled passions of the world's legendary rules and the defiant will of a rare beauty, THE POWER AND THE PASSION marks the debut of an important new talent destined to rank as one of the mistresses of the popular genre.