Lost Enchantment by Barbara Cartland

‘Help me…Oh help me! My dog…he is caught in a trap…’

The cry interrupted the Marquis of Alton as, despondent and furious, he strode through the grounds of his estate.

The girl who came running towards him was quite unknown. A pretty girl, fair hair, a strange elfin attraction, but not at all fashionable in her dress and style. The sort of girl that Lady Leone Harlington would have dismissed with an amused sneer.

At the thought of Leone, the toast of the Prince Regent's Carlton House set, the Marquis' brow clouded. Beautiful, passionate, desirable Leone was trying to manoeuvre him into marriage, that he knew....

As he turned his attention back to the rusty-toothed gin trap and the little, whimpering spaniel caught in it, he realised that he might also be trapped – into a marriage that he did not want.

What he could not know was that the strange girl was also trapped- trapped in a web of deceit and treachery that was to involve them both...

(Image from fantasticfiction.co.uk and description from back of book)

I couldn’t ignore Lost Enchantment – after all it was one of the first two Barbara Cartland novels that I read. It has a sentimental place on my bookshelf for life.

Checklist time!

Hero to the rescue – check (and he is slightly less arrogant than others too)

Orphans heroine plus canine companion – check

Slightly stupid but not wicked brother – check

Hero’s super cool tell-it-how-it-is Grandmother – check

A real slime ball of a villain – check

So, you know that ‘Favourite Barbara Cartland Books’ pile I have mentioned? Well this book sits at the very top. All thanks to the hero. I just love the guy.

From the minute he meets Sylvina he tries to help her – becoming her own knight in shining armour. And he is a genuinely likeable guy (which always helps) who is lacking some of that arrogance and entitlement that comes along with some of the leading men.

But the one thing that I love most of all is that he all but bends over backwards trying to win her over. She does care for him but circumstances have led to her being engaged to someone else and he still perseveres knowing something hinky is going on and desperately wanting to rescue her.

Awwwwwe!

‘I believed in those days I had no heart,’ the Marquis replied.‘And now?” the Dowager asked quietly.
‘I find it an unpredictable, irritable and extremely painful part of my anatomy,’ the Marquis said bitterly.