Reluctant to accept her arranged marriage to an English Duke she has never met, beautiful young American oil heiress, Emmeline Nevada Holtz, nicknamed 'Vada' after the State, travels to Paris to buy her trousseau before meeting her husband-to-be.
When her travelling companion, Nancy Sparling, has an accident and hurts her leg, Vada assumes her name to avoid unwelcome attention and travels on with just her elderly maid, determined to make the most of her last chance to explore Bohemian Paris and the wonders of the City that she had heard and read so much about.
At her hotel she finds a handsome intruder in her suite, not a thief as she at first thinks but a journalist looking to interview the famous heiress Emmeline.
Smitten by this charismatic Frenchman and his talk of poetry, Vada finds herself agreeing to go with him to the Soleil d'Or, wellspring of the Symbolist movement.
Soon they are deeply and uncontrollably in love, a love that is surely doomed by her deception, her betrothal to the Duke and now a terrifying ordeal at a Satanist Black Mass on the dark side of the City of Light.

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.