Showing results by narrator "Anthony Wren" in All Categories

Hugo, Earl of Ruven, is sailing home after ten years in India, where he served with his regiment. His grandfather, the old Earl, has died and Hugo has inherited the title and estate of Castle Ruven. He has also inherited his late brother's fiancee, Felice de Lisle. No one who sees the handsome man standing at the rail with his face turned toward the approaching coast suspects the truth. During one of the first battles of the Indian Mutiny, Hugo was severely injured. The new Earl of Ruven is returning home blind.

When the Balkan Prince Stanislaus demanded an English bride, Queen Victoria decided to send him Lady Lavina, whose family had a slight connection with royalty. Determined to avoid this fate, Lavina threw herself on the mercy of the Marquis of Elswick, a disagreeable man who had turned his back on the world following betrayal by the woman he had loved. Surprisingly, he agreed to help by pretending to be engaged to Lavina, and, with her father, they left to visit her relatives in Scotland.

When Rena's father dies she is alone in the world, forced out of the vicarage that has been her home, with nowhere to go and no money. She seeks help at the large wooden cross standing in the nearby grounds of "The Grange". And there in the earth she finds three golden coins, which she hands over to the new young Earl of Lansdale. They form a friendship, the sweetest one of her life. But her new happiness is threatened by Mr. Wyngate, a wealthy man determined to force the Earl to marry his daughter.

The beautiful Lola Fenton lives happily in a small cottage in the depths of Worcestershire, but she is suddenly orphaned when her father and mother are killed in a railway crash. Her uncle, the Earl of Kencombe, comes to the funeral and then tells her that, as she has no money, she will have to come and live with him. He obviously has no wish for her to do so, but feels that it is his duty as her legal Guardian.

Can money buy you happiness? Impoverished Lady Viola and her twin brother David Northcombe find that their fortunes change dramatically when their entrepreneurial father dies unexpectedly, leaving them a vast fortune that will change their lives forever. Returning home to England, still reeling from their dramatic change in circumstances, fate seems to have smiled on them when the handsome, but impoverished, Duke of Glentorran dramatically rescues them from the perils of the sea off the coast of Scotland. Barbara Cartland was the world's most prolific novelist who wrote an amazing 723 books in her lifetime.

Valeria Montford is beautiful, proud and romantic. When she meets the reticent Lord Waterford in France, everything goes wrong and she hates him for making her feel humiliated. Then she meets Sir Peter Cousins - devastatingly handsome, he is much more exciting and appears strongly attracted to her. Back in England, Valeria's beloved father tells her that a cad has defrauded him of his fortune and that she is his only chance of escaping penury. The rich Lord Waterford has offered to marry her and free him from his debts.

The beautiful Lady Diana Dinsdale’s father has died and shortly afterwards her mother dies as well and she is heartbroken at the loss of both her beloved parents. After the Earl of Dinsdale’s death, her mother had married again to William Walker, a rich businessman who is cynically seeking to improve his standing socially to help his financial interests to make him even richer. And now Diana is all alone except for her grasping stepfather.

When the Duke of Barningforde was told by his second son, Alastair, that he had married an actress in Paris without his approval, he exiled Alastair from England with only a very small allowance. His wife, Grace, actually came from a good Scottish family and was not an actress, but had a very fine soprano voice and sang with a famous French orchestra. But the Duke would not listen and Alastair and Grace never again set foot in their homeland.

The beautiful Joanna West’s parents had been killed in a very nasty road accident and as she is the only child she inherits her father and mother’s house in the County of Huntingdonshire. When she sees the condition of her house, she realises at once that it will need a great deal of money to be spent on it to make it as warm and cosy as her mother had done.

The Duke of Lavenham learns from a letter that the beautiful Lady Penelope who he finds fun and amusing, is telling her friends that she is going to marry him. The Duke is horrified as he has no intention of marrying anyone for many years to come and he hurries to visit Penelope to discuss the matter with her and tell her that he has no intention of marrying anybody. As he is leaving the house, a young girl sobbing hysterically jumps into his carriage and begs him to take her away.

The Earl of Rockhaven calls on his friend the Vicar, the Reverend Simon Wolverham, to ask if his beautiful daughter, Lucinda, will pretend to be his own daughter, Muriel, who is away in Scotland staying with her aunt. Fortunately the girls have similar looks and Lucinda could easily be taken for Muriel. The Earl explains to the Vicar that a certain Baron Schlesinger and his son, Kurt, from Germany have invited themselves to luncheon at his nearby ancestral home and are insistent that his daughter is present for the occasion.

The lovely red-haired eighteen year old Lady Viola Francis is orphaned. She and her fortune are in the power of her stepfather, the sinister Sir Rudolph Vane. Violas late father, the Earl of Galhampton, was passionately interested in motor cars and from an early age Viola worked with him on his engines. Now she wants to fulfil his ambition to build one that can be sold to the growing numbers of people keen to acquire this new and expensive form of transport. Sir Rudolph, however, has other plans for her and her fortune and wants her to marry the ineffectual Lord Carncross.

The beautiful Alvita who had lost both her parents, was living quietly in her family home in Southern Russia. Her father had been Russian and her mother had been English. Alvita was pleased to receive a visit from her brother, Ivor, but shocked when he told her that they must leave Russia immediately, as a Revolution was inevitable and would start very soon. He had brought with him his friend, Nicholas, who said that he would help them pack up as many of their treasures as they could and make their way to England. Alvita felt a little unsure of Nicholas, but thought that perhaps she might be mistaken.

The beautiful Princess Vasila, an orphan, who has been looked after by Baroness von Bergstein in a Grace and Favour house, is astonished when an Equerry arrives to take her to Windsor Castle to see the Queen. She is not told until she arrives that Prince Gadelov of Saralovia, which is a small Balkan State, has appealed to Queen Victoria to give him a Royal British wife so that he can be protected from the grasping Russians. When the Queen tells Vasila that she is to marry Prince Gadelov immediately, she is horrified and very frightened.

The beautiful Ilena Foringham not only helped her father, who was a senior Member of Parliament, with his speeches but she also assisted Lord Witherington with his. She had always found him a tremendous bore, but when he eventually proposed marriage to her she knew that this was something that she could not bear and that she could never be happy with him. As Ilena realised that her parents also wanted her to marry Lord Witherington, she knew that she had no option but to run away.

Lorena Conway has devoted most of her life to being a secretary to her father, a noted historian. Sir Arthur suddenly dies and leaves Lorena with too little money to maintain her childhood home. Wondering how she will survive, the beautiful Lorena overhears a friend of her neighbour plotting to kill the Earl of Bramfield, who has recently and unexpectedly inherited from his father and whose vast estates lie near her home. Realising that she has no option but to try and convince the Earl of the peril he is in, Lorena sets out to confront him.

Rupert Fitzalan has succeeded his grandfather, Lord Fitzalan. Leaving behind his life in America, Rupert goes to claim his inheritance in the Scottish Highlands. This includes Castle Fitzalan, which he last saw at the age of eight. A series of revelations awaits him. First, the Castle is a wreck. Then there is the Fitzalan feud with the MacLeans, who are demanding the return of an heirloom they claim has been stolen from them. They are desperate to obtain it and attack and kidnap Rupert. Finally he meets the beautiful Celina Stirling who is engaged to her cousin, Hamish MacLean.

The beautiful Aurora Hartnell has just left her Finishing School in Paris and returns home to Hadleigh Hall. It is Christmas Eve and she hears that an eligible bachelor, Lord Moreton, has moved into nearby Elton Hall. Aurora dreams that he is handsome, tall and exciting - until she meets him and finds that he is none of them. In no time Aurora has received an unwelcome proposal of marriage from Lord Moreton, but he appears to be strangely close to her intimidating stepmother, Lady Hartnell.

Sir Robin Dunstead returns from India after his father's death to find that he now owns two of the largest ancestral houses in the country both containing superb art collections, but the houses and the pictures are in a very poor state of repair. Unfortunately Sir Robin's father had sold everything that was saleable in both houses and everything of value is entailed for future generations of Dunsteads. Robin is left with no income and finds he has not enough money to buy food for himself and sister Alena.

Tania, the lovely daughter of the late Lord Amesly, leaves her school in Paris and is travelling by train to Boulogne when her train crashes into another one. She is helped and befriended by a charming young Englishman - Captain Rupert More - and with him she reaches the ferry and unexpectedly meets two friends of her parents, Charles and Selina Bracebridge. Rupert becomes captivated by Tania, but since he is a soldier he may be sent away to war at any moment and cannot declare his hand.