Set in a beautiful villa high in the hills above Florence, this seductive and moving novel reveals the full power of desperate love. Mary Panton ignores her desires in the calm of the villa as she contemplates her loveless marriage, but a single act of compassion begins a nightmare of violence that destroys her serenity. She turns for help to the notorious Rowley Flint, and through him she comes to realise that to deny love, with all its passions and risks, is to deny life itself.