A year later, Dinah falls in love with a second suitor. Bad luck follows, however: her bridegroom soon confesses that as a homosexual he can never make her happy the marriage is subsequently dissolved and Dinah lands back in her father's house. Despite her initial aversion to her financÉ, Dinah is so relieved to escape her family's involvement with the sale of opium-which she blames for destroying her mother-that she marries willingly. Instead, she is rewarded with a betrothal to the handsome, intellectual heir of a tea dynasty in distant Darjeeling. Nevertheless, the scandal of her mother's death has ruined Dinah's chances of marrying a local boy. Too tall, too intelligent, and far too pushy to suit 19th-century Calcutta's intimate Jewish community, Dinah at least remains free of her mother's opium addiction and is unlikely to be murdered, as Luna was, by a jealous lover. Dinah Sassoon was never a delicate beauty like her mother, Luna, and the gossips whisper that it's just as well. Here, Courter (Code Ezra, 1986, etc.) writes of a Jewish heiress to an opium empire who braces scandal to become a formidable defender of her own and her family's vital interests.
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