The Pride of the Peacock [antikvár]

The Pride of the Peacock Jessica's early days were spent in the shadow of Oakland Hall, her family's ancestral home which, owing to financial difficulties, they had been obliged to sell to the rumbustious opal miner, Ben Henniker. Jessica learned that there was a certain mystery surrounding her when she discovered an unconseerated grave near the house. From the garrulous, irrepressible Ben, she heard the legend of the Green Flash at Sunset, the unique opal reckoned to be the most beautiful in the world, which had disappeared after Ben had shown it to a group of colleagues. Gradually she learned that she was involved in the mystery. Through Ben, she left England for Australia and found herself in the midst of the opal mining community, at the head of which was Joss Madden, a man of power and such pride that he was compared with the peacocks after which Ben had named his Australian mansion. Forced into a marriage distasteful to her, Jessica was caught up in the search for the famous opal which was said to bring ill luck to all those who owned it, yet men committed crimes in order to possess it. The tension increased with every new discovery until Jessica realized that more was involved than the search for a lost opal and that her own life was threatened.