A Portrait of Love

How can beautiful young Fedora Colwyn and her ailing father be on the verge of starvation when the walls of their run-down home are hung with a magnificent collection of paintings by the great Masters?
Alexander Colwyn is renowned as the nation's greatest restorer of pictures and his valuable works of art are in trust for future generations and so cannot be sold.
Fedora is desperate, not knowing where to turn or how to restore her beloved father to health with virtually no money, but she has a loyal ally in Jim, who has looked after the family for many years.
So, when the Earl of Heversham invites her father to restore the pictures in his famous collection at Heversham Castle, but knows that her father is too proud to accept payment and that he is too ill to do very much, she will undertake most of the restoration work herself.
She takes him to Heversham Castle, intending to accept payment without telling him about it.
There she meets the handsome Earl and falls helplessly in love, only to find that a conceited and treacherous Society beauty and a dark family secret stand in the way of their love.
But, when she is embroiled in a sinister murder plot, her life as well as her love is at stake.

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.