The Disgraceful Duke

Innocent and lovely Shimona Bardsley's father, the celebrated actor Beau Bardsley, has fallen desperately ill and yet he insists on persevering with the evening's performance as Hamlet at The Theatre Royal, Drury Lane.
A concerned Shimona accompanies him to the theatre where she overhears the notoriously disreputable Duke of Ravenstone – known as 'His Disgrace' – offering her father the huge sum of five hundred guineas to find him an actress to play 'a part' for just two nights.
Desperate to raise enough money to take her father to a warmer clime and thereby save his life, Shimona accepts the Duke's offer and finds herself reluctantly embroiled in a deception that her conscience finds hard to bear.
Unchaperoned in the grand Ravenstone House in London with the devilish Duke and an imperious Clan Chieftain, Shimona is afraid, alone and in trouble –
But soon, to her bewilderment and ecstasy, she finds that she is also in 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.