''An epic voyage well worth taking ... Exhilarating'' Marianka Swain, TelegraphOne of Britain''s outstanding historical writers delivers a romantic and picaresque masterpiece that tells the fascinating story of William Neilson. In 1720, the young William Neilson leaves Edinburgh to make his fortune in Europe, first sailing to Rotterdam and then on foot to Paris, where he meets and is immediately employed by the banker John Law. A day later he is in the Bastille, but not before he has encountered a young woman of surpassing beauty to whom Neilson will be devoted for the rest of his life.Imprisoned in the Bastille, he has no possibility of seeing or communicating with his beloved. When at last he recovers his freedom, he is despatched at once to sea, bound for the Indies. He will be shipwrecked, become an equerry on the -e-de-France, anon command a disorderly legion in Persia, become a linguist able to hold his own in diplomatic and mercantile circles, all the while anticipating a summon
