In the poisonous courts of seventeenth-century Dauphiny, a young heiress worth a fortune in land and title has become the prize in a deadly game of political chess. Madame de Condillac, a woman of ice and ambition, controls her ward Valerie de La Vauvraye with an iron will, grooming her for a marriage that will serve the Dowager's own ruthless ends. But the Queen has her own designs, and she dispatches the only man she trusts to unravel the scheme: Martin Marie Rigobert de Garnache, a middle-aged swordsman whose reputation for blunt honesty and lethal precision has earned him enemies across France. Garnache has little patience for what he calls "women's troubles," but he has a promise to keep and a conspirator to unmask. As the wedding date approaches and the net tightens around Valerie, he must navigate a world where every smile hides a dagger and every handshake conceals a trap. What follows is Sabatini at his finest: a swashbuckling romance where the blade work is as sharp as the wit, and the true treasure isn't the heiress's fortune but the dangerous, reluctant thing blooming between a cynical soldier and a girl who has never been allowed to choose her own destiny.
