Madalena

Madalena de Brussec and her twin brother, Armand, are smuggled out of France in the Spring of 1812, when their father - at odds with the Emperor Napoleon - fears arrest as any moment. They come to England, to their aunt, who, used to her own conventional, biddable offspring, has never met anything quite like these two volatile seventeen-year-olds. She finds them a mixed blessing, particularly Madalena, who seems to he forever making scandals. A delightful mixture of innocence and Parisian maturity, Madalena meets and falls completely in love with the mysterious Devereux, Duke of Lytton, a government agent who allows her to believe he is a smuggler. Her love is to be tested throughout a series of events which would have daunted anyone less totally committed. Meanwhile, her brother Armand is following his own pursuits - pursuits destined to end in near disaster. And in France, their father is finally arrested. . Madalena is a refreshingly different heroine, whose effervescent character makes this a memorable romance of Regency times. When lovely young Madalena de Brussac first saw the Duke of Lytten, she was disguised as a boy, and he was cloaked in mystery as he rode his great stallion on a secret mission along the storm-wracked coast of Cornwall. The next time Madalena met the Duke was amid the dazzling brilliance of a London ball, as he paraded with his beautiful mistress to scandalized whispers. By now Madalena knew that no proper young lady would become involved with this man who had lost count of his conquests in love, and who revealed so little of the private, quite possibly evil, intrigues he pursued in Regency England and France. But Madalena was no proper young lady. She was a woman hopelessly in love - and heedless of the cost....