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Author's Note
for The Golden Leopard
The Golden Leopard was a special joy to write because it allowed me to draw
on my love of travel and passion for history. Although the book is set in
England, the story was first inspired by a trip to India, where I became
fascinated with the culture and, in particular, the experiences of
Englishmen who traveled there during the eighteenth and early nineteenth
centuries-the years preceding what became known as the British Raj.
Men went out to India to make their fortunes, and some, like Clive,
Raffles, Hastings, and two of the Wellesley brothers, earned fame (or
notoriety) in politics and war. Arthur Wellesley, later Duke of Wellington,
developed in India the talents for leadership and organization that
eventually brought down Napoleon. Others, less clever or less fortunate,
found graves half a world from their homeland.
India was a crucible that could temper a man, disillusion him, bring out
the best or worst in him. It certainly left its mark on Hugo, Lord Duran
(The Golden Leopard) and the heroes of books two and three of my Big Cat
trilogy. The Englishwomen who must deal with these men will have their hands
full.
There was never a principality of Alanabad, of course, although some of the
rajahs, nawabs, and nizams of the era were far more colorful and eccentric
than my fictional monarch.
The tale of Princess Savitri and her beloved Satyavan is contained in the
Mahabharata, India's ancient epic of 100,000 verses.
Over the centuries the legend has been retold in many ways, none of them
the version Shivaji presents to Jessica. But the courage of Savitri
resonates with Jessica, and when she ferrets out the original story and its
happy ending, she is transformed.
For all that the heroes of this trilogy are profoundly affected by their
experiences in India, their love stories begin when they return to England.
So I went to England as well, in company with a writer friend, to visit the
places where my characters would play out the most important few months of
their lives.
With me driving and Alicia Rasley navigating, we got lost only forty or
fifty times, ate too much good pub grub in restored fifteenth-century
posthouses, and rummaged through every second-hand bookstore in southwest
England. Our destinations included London, the Cotswolds, the medieval city
of Wells, the Mendip hills, and the seacoast areas of Dorset, Sussex, and
Kent, although we also wandered though a number of wonderful places we never
meant to go.
For a time we put down roots at a Georgian country house, now a small hotel
on the fringes of Dartmoor, and spent several days roaming single-track
roads, tramping the moorlands, admiring prehistoric stone circles, and
climbing the granite tors.
None is quite so high or complex as the fictional Devil's Tor with its stone
circle, but that's what imagination is for.
 Near where the east and north branches of the river Dart come together, I found the perfect spot for Shivaji and Jessica to launch their prayer boats.
 And north of the moor, near the town of Cheddar, we explored rugged gorges
like the one where Jessica and Duran made their daring escape.
 Collectors have always interested me, and antiquarians were in full cry
during the nineteenth century. One of the best known was Jessica's mentor,
the sixth Duke of Devonshire (the Bachelor Duke), who spent years traveling
through Europe in search of objects to adorn Chatsworth, his Derbyshire
estate. He never did take a wife.
 In London, we especially enjoyed pottering around the Lincoln's Inn Fields
home of Sir John Soane, prominent architect of the Regency era and obsessive
collector of anything he could get his hands on.
To my astonishment, a special exhibit at Soane House featured Sir Charles
Towneley, who happens to be one of my ancestors! (For a picture of Sir
Charles in his Gallery, see
http://gallery.euroweb.hu/art/z/zoffany/towneley.jpg )
 The Church of St. Giles in the Fields, located near the theatre district of
London, has been for centuries a refuge for the sorrowful and the lonely.
At its Resurrection Gate, condemned prisoners on their way to "Tyburn tree"
for hanging were offered a bowl of ale-one for the road, so to speak. In the
early nineteenth century, the area near the church (Seven Dials, sometimes
known as the Rookeries) was a maze of narrow, squalid streets and alleyways
where robbers, prostitutes, and beggars plied their trades.
Vagrants and those lost to drink can still be found there, along with
fashionable patrons on their way to shop in New Oxford Street or attend a
play at Covent Garden or Drury Lane. The church itself, beautifully
maintained, is a quiet oasis for prayer and reflection. As I sat in the pew
where Jessica might have awaited her bridegroom, I imagined Duran's arrival
and the unusual wedding that followed.
Many of the other sites we visited will appear in Heart of the Tiger,
coming in May 2003 from Penguin-Putnam/Onyx.
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