Emerald Love — Elizabeth Chater

INDIA...in the year 1856, a land of passion, wealth and power, seething with the undercurrents of violence as its people strove to throw off the yoke of British rule. But for innocent young Brittania Layton, returning to the land of her youth, India was a promise of love and a reminder of passionate dreams and magical embraces. Would she find the land she remembered, with its mystical charms and oppulent gifts -- a land of forbidden love -- or a nation wracked by the violence of change? Searching for the answers that eluded her grasp, she would find love in the arms of Captain Adrian Fairmont...and become entangled in his web of deceit.... From the perils of a nation rife with the turmoils of war to the arms of the one man who could save her from danger and terror. Brittania sought the shadow of romance and discovered the truth of her own desires.

We must not forget that in the sky of India, serene as it is, a small cloud may arise, at first no bigger than a man's hand, but which, growing bigger and bigger, may at last threaten to overwhelm us with ruin.

-- Lord Canning, in a speech to the directors of the East India Company, August 1855.

The Sepoy Mutiny began on May 10, 1857, in Meerut.