Love Under Fire

Waif-like beauty Elvina is tiny and immature after years of malnourishment and indeed she looks far younger than her seventeen years. Weak, however, she is not. Hardened by years of beatings and abuse at the hands of her half-crazed Portuguese stepmother and sickened by her father's constant drunken behaviour, Elvina is determined to escape Lisbon and flee to her native England. Despite the dangers of the Napoleonic War, which is raging in Spain and Portugal, she dyes her skin to make herself look Portuguese and stows away aboard the yacht of the handsome and heroic Lord Wye, bound for London with urgent dispatches from the Duke of Wellington to the Prime Minister. When she is discovered on board, the kindly Lord Wye believes her story that she is a thirteen-year-old fleeing the War to join her English sister and takes pity on her. He agrees that he will take her to England in his yacht, but first he must call in to Spain for more intelligence to show the Prime Minister and the weather suddenly becomes increasing tempestuous. And amid a terrible storm at sea and captured by the French only to fight their way free, a deep friendship under fire is kindled between Elvina and Lord Wye and soon becomes an all-consuming love when they arrive back in England. And then other dangers to their love for each other begin to emerge.

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.