And was there a girl in the entire Cape Colony who would blame her for accepting this strange marriage proposal without a second thought, despite the fact that he has not said a word about love? For wasn’t he the most attractive, most romantic figure of the day – the man possessed of fabulous riches, irresistible charm and aristocratic refinement?
This historical novel about South Africa, set in the very early days of the Cape of Good Hope, transports the reader to a distant, romantic past – to the adventurous days of the Dutch East India Company, when the Colony was young. We meet some of the outstanding people of the period: among them, the upright schoolmaster and "comforter of the sick" – Paul Roux – and the avaricious and unscrupulous governor – Adriaan van der Stel. We become familiar with some of the problems facing the recently arrived French Huguenot refugees; not least among them Roux’s initial struggle to continue the instruction of his pupils in their mother tongue.