The Earl Rings A Bell

"You are a very lucky young woman!" demure but beautiful Donela Colwyn's stepfather tells her condescendingly and then announces that she is to marry his friend, who he is so impressed with, the wealthy and influential Lord Waltingham.
But Donela feels anything but lucky at the appalling prospect of wedding a man old enough to be her father and who she has only met once.
Desperate to escape she flees by stagecoach, little caring to where it is heading.
And once aboard she meets the exotic Supper Club performers Basil Banks and his Three Belles, who are en route to perform at an aristocratic stag party in one of the country's most celebrated stately houses.
Ignorant of the world beyond her stepfather's stables and her Florence Finishing school, Donela knows nothing of the 'poses plastiques' in which young women perform all but naked. Or of what coarse men expect of such girls.
So when she agrees to stand in for one of the Belles, who has been taken ill so that she cannot perform, she is appalled by the audience's behaviour and afraid of the host, the dashing and seemingly overwhelming Earl of Huntingford.
Alone, terrified and penniless, Donela has lost everything she holds dear, but little does she know that she is also about to lose her heart.

Barbara Cartland was the world's most prolific novelist who wrote an amazing 723 books in her lifetime, of which no less than 644 were romantic novels with worldwide sales of over 1 billion copies and her books were translated into 36 different languages.
As well as romantic novels, she wrote historical biographies, 6 autobiographies, theatrical plays and books of advice on life, love, vitamins and cookery.
She wrote her first book at the age of 21 and it was called Jigsaw. It became an immediate bestseller and sold 100,000 copies in hardback in England and all over Europe in translation.
Between the ages of 77 and 97 she increased her output and wrote an incredible 400 romances as the demand for her romances was so strong all over the world.
She wrote her last book at the age of 97 and it was entitled perhaps prophetically The Way to Heaven.
Her books have always been immensely popular in the United States where in 1976 her current books were at numbers 1 & 2 in the B. Dalton bestsellers list, a feat never achieved before or since by any author.
Barbara Cartland became a legend in her own lifetime and will be best remembered for her wonderful romantic novels so loved by her millions of readers throughout the world, who have always collected her books to read again and again, especially when they feel miserable or depressed.
Her books will always be treasured for their moral message, her pure and innocent heroines, her handsome and dashing heroes, her blissful happy endings and above all for her belief that the power of love is more important than anything else in everyone's life.