A proper gentleman, Constantine, Lord Wylde, proposes to a similarly proper young woman. It's a practical proposal that pleases both parties....Until the night Constantine finds an old pistol–packing pirate waiting for him at home. The old man claims that Constantine was promised at birth to his granddaughter. Constantine travels to Cornwall to unearth the truth and, once there, discovers the family fortune is the shameful result of piracy and highway robbery. And he meets the young woman his father promised him to at birth. Lisabeth is beautiful and well–educated, but because of her unusual upbringing, she's unaware of the proper behavior of young ladies in the ton. As she has always been enamored by stories of Constantine's swashbuckling ancestors, she's half inclined to fall in love with him too, but she finds him nothing like them! He's too staid, and he finds her too Original.... until they fall into each other's arms and realize that they may have been meant for each other after all.
Author
Edith Layton wrote her first novel when she was ten. She bought a marbleized notebook and set out to write a story that would fit between its covers. Now, an award-winning author with more than thirty novels and numerous novellas to her credit, her criteria have changed. The story has to fit the reader as well as between the covers. Graduating from Hunter College in New York City with a degree in creative writing and theater, Edith worked for various media, including a radio station and a major motion picture company. She married and went to suburbia, where she was fruitful and multiplied to the tune of three children. Her eldest, Michael, is a social worker and artist in NYC. Adam is a writer and performer on NPR's Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me. Daughter Susie is a professional writer, comedian and performer who works in television. Publishers Weekly called Edith Layton "one of romance's most gifted writers." Layton has enthralled readers and critics with books that capture the spirit of historically distant places and peoples. "What I've found," she says, "is that life was very different in every era, but that love and love of life is always the same." Layton won an RT Book Reviews Career Achievement award for the Historical genre in 2003 and a Reviewers' Choice award for her book The Conquest in 2001. Amazon.com's top reviewer called Layton's Alas, My Love (April 2005, Avon Books), "a wonderful historical." And her recent release, Bride Enchanted, is a Romantic Times 2007 Reviewers' Choice Award Nominee. Edith Layton lived on Long Island where she devoted time as a volunteer for the North Shore Animal League, the world's largest no-kill pet rescue and adoption organization. Her dog Daisy—adopted herself from a shelter—is just one member of Layton's household menagerie. Edith Layton passed away on June 1, 2009 from ovarian cancer.
