Book excerpt: It is first time that Isabella Galloway has returned to Evansville since she made her escape from her egotistical and controlling mother four years earlier. Bella would not have come now, if it were not for Leona Hodge, the woman she considered her real mother. Leona's urgent telegram informing Bella that her mother, the famous Virginia Galloway, was on her deathbed, was quite unexpected and Bella did not truly believe Virginia could be dying. When Bella left Evansville she had also left behind the love of her life, Neil Whitely, because she believed he had been unfaithful to her with none other than her own mother, Virginia. The prospect of seeing him again filled her with dread, because no matter how hard she tried to forget him, she could not. Bella traveled to France and had become a distinguished artist. By the time she returned to the United States and took a position at Carrington Academy as instructor, she considered herself truly independent. Her fear that the trip to her hometown would undo everything she had worked so hard to accomplish would only be the tip of what was to befall her as she discovers the curse of the Black Diamond Lavaliere.