Prima ballerina Lydia Kusminskaya, whose talents saved her from starvation in imperial St Petersburg, trusted her beauty to secure her place in the gilded cocoon of the court -- unaware of the cataclysm about to destroy it, and her hopes. Eighty years later, in London, the legacy of Lydia's beauty snares a woman and two men in the trap of their own obsessions: Alexander Wolfe, the desirable American who worships women and glamour; formidable businesswoman Bianca Berrisford, who believes beauty always has its price; and Lovat Whitburn, her bitter ex-husband, for whom beauty, once an ideal, is now a weapon. Now the three are chained to Lydia and each other in a lethal struggle for wealth, love and, above all, power. But the illusion of beauty which betrayed Lydia is lying in wait for them, too ...'A breathtaking achievement' Woman's Own 'Ms Brayfield knows what she is doing ...her women sound and act like real women' Anthony Burgess in the Independent 'A wonderfully written novel about men, women and a burning obsession' Me