The Daring Deception

Book excerpt: Handsome and dashing, the Marquis of Melsonby finds himself bored by the attentions of Society beauties, especially those of the undeniably beautiful and irritatingly ardent, Lady Karen Russell, who is trying to blackmail him into marriage. Then, as he is caught in a fierce snowstorm and stuck for the night at a lowly wayside inn, Fate puts in his way a lovely young waif called ‘Perdita Lydford’, who throws herself on his mercy. She is on the run from her cruel would-be ‘Guardian’, Sir Gerbold Whitton, and with good reason. Not only does he beat her sadistically, he is totally bent on marrying her and her sizeable inheritance by force to pay for his large debts. Since they are both in the same boat, the Marquis and Perdita then begin their daring deception and dupe their respective pursuers with a fake marriage that appears on the surface to be legal. But Sir Gerbold is not so easily daunted and he tries again to abduct Perdita. Escaping on the Marquis’s yacht to Morocco, poor Perdita is imperilled once more, ‘out of the frying pan and into the fire’, of a lecherous and murderous Sultan and his Harem, where she prays that love in the form of the Marquis can save her life and her virtue yet again.