Читать книгу The Harlot And The Sheikh - Marguerite Kaye - Страница 4

Author Note

Stephanie is the third English heroine in this series to find herself in deepest Arabia at the start of the nineteenth century. Preposterous, right? Maybe not as fanciful as you might think. Lady Hester Stanhope, who inspired my first desert book, Innocent in the Sheikh’s Harem, lived in Arabia from 1815. The last of Lady Jane Digby’s four husbands was a sheikh. She settled permanently in Arabia in 1853. Lady Anne Blunt, a breeder of Arabian horses and part inspiration for Stephanie, met with Lady Jane Digby in Damascus in 1877. And Gertrude Bell traveled to the Arabian desert in the early twentieth century and was instrumental in the foundation of Iraq. So my intrepid heroines do have a sound foundation in historical reality.

I have, however, chosen to avoid some of the more contentious aspects of nineteenth-century Arabia. My fantasy Arabia is free of the controversies of religion, imperialism and world politics, which affected it then and, unfortunately, continue to do so to this day. This series is quite a departure for me, but it’s been creatively liberating. I hope you enjoy my fantasy kingdom as much as I enjoyed dreaming it up.

I’ll end with a small confession. Before I started this book, I knew absolutely nothing about horses. I’ve ridden two. A donkey on the beach on the Isle of Bute, Scotland, and a carousel horse in Glasgow. I fell off both times. So please forgive any inaccuracies relating to equine matters; they are entirely my own doing.