The Curse of The Clan

Waif-like and half-starved the beautiful eighteen-year-old Tara has no second name and no family.
Orphaned when her mother died tragically in a carriage crash, she was raised in the appalling 'Orphanage of the Nameless' in London and has no knowledge at all of the world outside.
The drunken Matron of the Orphanage, Mrs. Barrowfield, relies on Tara to control, feed and look after the many orphans while she spends most of the money intended for their food on drink.
Then one day Mr. Falkirk comes to inform her that the Orphanage's owner and patron, the Duke of Arkcraig, has ordered her to Scotland to work in Castle Arkcraig.
Arriving, timid and overawed to meet her new Master, she is appalled to find that she has been seriously misled.
She is there not to work as a servant but to become the imperiously handsome Duke's bride – willing or not!
All of a sudden she is embroiled in the terrible enmity between the McCraig Clan and the equally warlike Kildonnons and the curse that hangs over them like a black cloud.
Worst of all, she finds that she has lost her heart to the husband for whom she had never asked and yet who now seems to be cold and aloof.
Has she been rescued from poverty and the horrors of the Orphanage and brought to the Duke's majestic Castle only to spend a lifetime starved of love?

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.