In the Florence of the Medicis and the

Renaissance painters, a young woman grows

in promise and in beauty. Claire Tarleton--

musician, artists model, scholar--blossoms

under the tutelage of her foster parents

Waiter and Elisabeth, who have cared for

her ever since her natural parents died in the

London plague that ahnost claimed a two-

year-old Claire as well. No child could have

had a more loving and protected upbring

ing--yet Claire has always been aware that

she lives in a world of adventure and danger.

Even as one war, waged for over a century

between England and France, is ending,

another is bloodily beginning. As the Turks

advance upon Italy, Claire and her family

flee to Elisabeth s ancestral home, a small

village on Normandy s coast. For Claire, the

move from a warm hub of beauty and culture

to the gray seacoast will prove traumatic.

Here, English by birth but French by

nurture, Claire finds half-denied questions

about her real parents and about her own

future rising strongly to the surface.