Madelon

Refusal to marry the man of her father's choice at the age of sixteen resulted in the beautiful Madelon del Rivas y Montevides being exiled to a convent where she was to spend the next three years until her father's death freed her to return with her brother to court and to a life she had glimpsed only briefly before being sent into seclusion. Beauty and innocence were rare qualities in a woman at the Spanish court in the year 1072, when Christians and Moslems formed strange alliances in the battle for wealth and power. Madelon had both and she was soon to find herself plunged into a world of…