Part of Series
Since his beloved wife’s death, Sir Robert Royden finds it unbearable to stay at home in his ancestral Manor House and instead spends his nights drinking and gambling away the family fortune in the low spots of London, leaving his beautiful young daughter Crisa to her own devices and her adored horses. One day, after a long absence, he brings to their home an American millionaire, who wants Crisa’s hand in marriage in return for a large sum of money that will keep her, the family estate and her father in comfort in perpetuity. And so poor Crisa is virtually forced into marrying him and then finds herself in a ‘golden cage’, trapped at the huge and ugly New York mansion of the aged Silas P. Vanderhault. When her husband dies suddenly after a stroke on the Liner to New York, she is besieged by his grasping family, who have been cut out of his will as he has left everything to Crisa. She carefully prepares her plan and then manages to make her escape from them by using a false name and passport to voyage back to England on a French luxury Liner. Mid-Atlantic and by pure chance she meets a mysterious, handsome but temporarily blinded man in one of the best suites on the Liner, who needs her help as a secretary for his correspondence. And in a matter of days, she is in love – A love that surely is doomed from the very start!
Author
Dame Mary Barbara Hamilton Cartland was a English writer, during her long career, she wrote over 700 books, making her one of the most prolific authors of the 20th century. She sold over 1,000 million copies throughout the world, earning her a place in the Guinness Book of Records. The world's most famous romantic novelist, she also wrote autobiographies, biographies, health and cookery books, and stage plays and recorded an album of love songs. She was often billed as the Queen of Romance, and became one of the United Kingdom's most popular media personalities, appearing often at public events and on television, dressed in her trademark pink and discoursing on love, health and social issues. She started her writing career as a gossip columnist for the Daily Express. She published her first novel, Jigsaw, a society thriller, in 1923. It was a bestseller. She went on to write myriad novels and earn legions of fans, she also wrote under her married name Barbara McCorquodale. Some of her books were made into films. Ever the romantic, during WWII, she served as the Chief Lady Welfare Officer in Bedfordshire. She gathered as many wedding dresses as she could so that service brides would have a white gown to wear on their wedding day. She also campaigns for the rights of Gypsies, midwives and nurses. Barbara Cartland McCorquodale passed away on 21 May 2000, with 160 still unpublished manuscripts, that are being published posthumously.
