The Peacock's Eye

In the glittering world of fin de siècle Vienna, the Countess Maria Aurora Bilderheim-Traun had been confidante, mistress, and muse to some of the greatest names of an immortal era. But if her life had dazzled as much by its notoriety as by its fame, the strangest scandal was to come long afterwards. Who though, among those who knew the truth, would be prepared to reveal it? Not even her outspoken, ironic grand-daughter, whose life of dowdy pedantry belies a passionate past of her own that no one would dare to celebrate. For she was the other Maria Aurora: the other, unsingable muse.