

When they meet again in St Petersburg, she knows that her fate is entangled with this vibrant man, whom she cannot understand, and yet who. Apart from writing, her passions are music (she plays in several amateur orchestras) horses, wine, architecture and the English countryside. London, 1851: all the world flocks to the Great Exhibition, where beautiful, independent Fleur Hamilton encounters the enigmatic Count Sergei Kirov. They had have three children, Hannah, Jane and Michael. She currently lives in London with her husband.

She is also the author of Bill Slider Mystery series, and writes under the pen names Elizabeth Bennett and Emma Woodhouse. In 1993 she won the Romantic Novelists' Association Romantic Novel of the Year Award with Emily, the third volume of her Kirov Saga, a trilogy set in nineteenth century Russia.

The series was originally intended to comprise twelve volumes, but it has proved so popular that it has now been extended over thirty. The birth of the MORLAND DYNASTY series enabled Cynthia Harrod-Eagles to become a full-time writer in 1979. She wrote her first novel while at university and in 1972 won the Young Writers' Award with The Waiting Game. She had a variety of jobs in the commercial world, starting as a junior cashier at Woolworth's and working her way down to Pensions Officer at the BBC. Cynthia Harrod-Eagles was born on13 August 1948 in Shepherd's Bush, London, England, where was educated at Burlington School, a girls' charity school founded in 1699, and at the University of Edinburgh and University College London, where she studied English, history and philosophy.
