168. Love Holds The Cards

Accustomed to spending fortunes on fast women and high living, Lord Wynchingham is horrified to lose one hundred thousand pounds in a card game and then finds that he is almost bankrupt. So when Tina Croome, his beautiful orphaned Ward, throws herself on his mercy he says that there is nothing he can do. Unless, she suggests, he uses the last of his credit to launch her into London Society and quickly attract a rich husband, using her large dowry to save her unfortunate Guardian from disgrace and the debtors’ prison. Eager suitors flock to the lovely young debutante, Tina, like bees to a honeypot, including Lord Wynchingham’s craven dissolute cousin Claude and the unpleasant but very wealthy Lord Welton, who Tina takes an instant dislike to. With great reluctance, she agrees to marry him, but only to save Lord Wynchingham from a dreadful fate. The more she comes to despise her fiancé, the deeper she falls in love with Lord Wychingham. But it is too late to prevent her imminent Wedding to Lord Welton and surely her love is doomed – until the crazed cousin Claude’s wicked and murderous kidnap plot intervenes to change her life, and love, for ever.KeywordsThe Prince of Wales, Newmarket, Piccadilly, Berkeley Square, Fleet Prison, the duns, the Beau Monde