The Convent of St. Catherine in the city of Bursa was a small one, but it was rich and distinguished. It had not always been so, but the recent prosperity was due to the presence of one of the sultan’s wives. Princess Theadora Cantacuzene of Byzantium lived within the convent walls.

Theadora Cantacuzene was now thirteen, and quite capable of childbearing. Sultan Orkhan, however, was sixty-two and had a harem full of nubile females both innocent and experienced. The little Christian virgin in the convent had only been a political necessity after all. And so she remained there, forgotten by her Ottoman husband.

Had he seen her, however, even the jaded Orkhan could not have ignored Theadora. She had grown tall and had long, beautifully shaped arms and legs, a slender torso, firm, high, cone-shaped breasts with long pink nipples, and a beautiful heart-shaped face. Her skin was like smooth cream, for although she enjoyed the outdoors, she never tanned. Her dark mahogany-colored hair with its golden lights hung straight down her back to just above the soft swell of her sweetly rounded buttocks. The violet eyes were startlingly clear, and as candid as they had always been. Her nose was small and straight, her mouth lush with a full lower lip.