The Lady of Seville

It is the close of the hot summer of 1559 and Spain is at the height of its Imperial powers. Its treasure fleets ply the Spanish Main between the New World and Seville, laden with the gold and silver of vanquished Indian nations, whilst at home the all-powerful Inquisition jealously guards the nation’s Faith.
Amidst the hothouse artifice of Seville’s aristocratic salons, Doña Maria de Cavala’s dreams of an ideal marriage to a young aristocrat are unexpectedly dashed when his father becomes the unwitting victim of a plot to ruin him and is condemned to death for heresy. Instead Maria must marry the baleful Alonso de Tordesillas – a corrupt soldier of fortune from the Indies. It is a union that will secure her family’s wealth and prestige, but condemn her to certain misery. Appalled by this reversal of her fortunes, Maria renounces duty and honour and escapes to follow her former betrothed – the young Miguel Ortega– who has fled for his life to South America.
There, as Miguel struggles to make a new life for himself, his noble upbringing leaves him unprepared him for the harshness of the new world he now encounters. It is a world of guile, of graft and of the exploitation of weakness; a world where swift wits, a hard heart and skill in the bearing of arms alone determine a man’s fortune. Can the love that María once felt for him survive these changes of fortune, or her growing fascination with the handsome Basque adventurer who has promised to be her escort?