On a hot summer's day in 1880 the beautiful Lady Rosella is cutting a basket of blooms in her beloved Rose Garden at her aunt's house in Hampshire.
It is her seventeenth birthday and no one remembers it except for Thomas, the gardener's boy.
Later she is driven to Winchester and has an unpleasant encounter with two raucous gentlemen in the local tavern before going on to fit her first ball gown that her aunt has given her the money for just before she died.
But who is the lovely masked woman she glimpses in the mirror at the dress-makers, a glorious vision clad in rose-pink silk? And who is the dark figure approaching through the shadows of a dim and ghostly ballroom?
Before she will discover the answers to these questions and to escape marriage to a most unpleasant companion of her uncle's, Rosella must travel many miles to the glorious City of Venice accompanied by Pickle an extremely talkative and colourful parrot.
She has left behind everything dear to her and when a mysterious stranger appears in Venice, Rosella believes that he may be the love she has so often dreamed about.
This love will bring her pain and passion beyond anything she could ever have imagined.
But her hopes are in ruins when she discovers the mysterious stranger to be the son of her arch enemy and once again she must flee.
Will Rosella and her true love ever be reconciled – or will the Fates conspire to keep them apart forever?
Find out in this thrilling new romance by Barbara Cartland, the one hundredth title in the Barbara Cartland Pink Collection.