Fortune's Lady

by Melinda Hammond

Upon the death of her godfather, beautiful Lady Rosalyn Tremayne inherits his large fortune, and in the spring of 1816 she returns to London after a prolonged absence. Her reappearance in the fashionable world causes much speculation. Has she decided that it is time to take a husband? Certainly there is no lack of admirers, including the fascinating yet wholly ineligible Rake Hellborn, whose expensive lifestyle demands an advantageous match.

Genres: Regency

320 pages, Hardcover

First published June 1, 1982

About the author

I write under the names of Melinda Hammond and Sarah Mallory.

I have been telling stories for as long as I can remember - many of them born of frustration when I was stuck in a classroom longing to be rescued! I love anything romantic, whether it is a grand opera or a beautiful painting. It doesn't necessarily have to be happy, as long as it is inspiring.

I was born in Bristol and grew up on Barton Hill, an area of small terraced houses built in the nineteenth century between the mills and the railway. I think my love of adventure stories is due to the fact that I grew up with three older brothers and lived in a street full of boys! My love of history and the English language was fostered at grammar school, where I soon discovered the delights of Georgian and Regency fiction, first of all with the works of Jane Austen and then Georgette Heyer.

I left school at sixteen to work in companies as varied as stockbrokers, marine engineers, biscuit manufacturers and even a quarrying company, but I never lost my love of history, and when I wasn't reading and researching the Georgian and Regency period I was writing stories about it.

When I was at home with my first child, I decided to try my hand at writing seriously, and my first historical novel, Fortune's Lady, was published by Robert Hale in 1980. I have now published more than twenty novels, over a dozen of them as Melinda Hammond, winning the Reviewers Choice award in 2005 from Singletitles.com for Dance for a Diamond and the Historical Novel Society's Editors Choice in 2006 for Gentlemen in Question. Writing as Sarah Mallory for Harlequin Mills & Boon, The Earl's Runaway Bride won a coveted CataNetwork Reviewers Choice award for 2010 and the RNA's RoNA Rose Award in 2012 and 2013.

For many years I lived in an old farmhouse on the edge of the Pennines in West Yorkshire, literally a stone's throw from open moorland. Now I live by the sea in the wild Highlands of Scotland. I love walking to think up my latest plot, or just to clear my head ready for another session of writing.

Reviews

[H2bourne · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a delight. Rosalyn is a spirited woman of 28 who broke off an engagement 10 years earlier for her younger sister's sake. She has now returned after travelling on the continent and takes up an unlikely friendship with Rake Helborn who has been told in no uncertain terms by his aunt that she is willing to leave her fortune to him if he makes an acceptable match. Well, thus the story proceeds at a good pace until the conclusion when all ends well, of course! This was an entertaining way to pass the time.

[Catie · Rating 2 out of 5]

The author's first book - she has written much better since.
This is ho-hum humdrum wannabe Heyer but without the wit or the style.