Having inherited a considerable fortune from her American Godmother, the beautiful young debutante, Zarina Bryden, really is the belle of the ball throughout London Society, wooed by an endless parade of insincere suitors in love with her money and not with her.
Both her mother and father have died and so she is an orphan, but a very rich one indeed.
So when her uncle and Guardian insists that she should marry the middle-aged Duke of Malnesbury, she is appalled at the idea and refuses point blank.
She then hears the sad news that her childhood friend, Rolfe, now the Earl of Linwood, is being forced to sell the neighbouring Priory with all its contents and its huge estate to pay off the accumulated debts of his now dead elder brother,
He is just about to start an auction for everything he owns when Zarina arrives to dramatically save the day with her huge fortune and she comes up with a cunning plan.
She makes an offer to use her inheritance to pay all The Priory's debts and avoid the auction if only Rolfe will make her his fiancée, thereby making marriage to the Duke impossible.
Reluctantly Rolfe agrees to her plan as he really has no other option.
And he also persuades Zarina to travel with him on a voyage to India – and she accepts his offer to escape a loveless marriage and perhaps to find a true love of her own at the end of the long voyage.

Barbara Cartland was the world's most prolific novelist who wrote an amazing 723 books in her lifetime, of which no less than 644 were romantic novels with worldwide sales of over 1 billion copies and her books were translated into 36 different languages.
As well as romantic novels, she wrote historical biographies, 6 autobiographies, theatrical plays and books of advice on life, love, vitamins and cookery.
She wrote her first book at the age of 21 and it was called Jigsaw. It became an immediate bestseller and sold 100,000 copies in hardback in England and all over Europe in translation.
Between the ages of 77 and 97 she increased her output and wrote an incredible 400 romances as the demand for her romances was so strong all over the world.
She wrote her last book at the age of 97 and it was entitled perhaps prophetically The Way to Heaven.
Her books have always been immensely popular in the United States where in 1976 her current books were at numbers 1 & 2 in the B. Dalton bestsellers list, a feat never achieved before or since by any author.
Barbara Cartland became a legend in her own lifetime and will be best remembered for her wonderful romantic novels so loved by her millions of readers throughout the world, who have always collected her books to read again and again, especially when they feel miserable or depressed.
Her books will always be treasured for their moral message, her pure and innocent heroines, her handsome and dashing heroes, her blissful happy endings and above all for her belief that the power of love is more important than anything else in everyone's life.