Gamble With Hearts

Published in 1980, Gamble with Hearts is without doubt everyone’s favourite of all my Regencies. It does not have one bad reader review (and some of my others have doozies) and has outsold all my other books on Kindle. I wrote it very quickly, and did very little rewriting. Perhaps, after all, first thoughts are best. I think however, the real secret is that I wrote this book floating upon a cloud of happiness. I had just become engaged, I was in love, and life was good. Perhaps this comes across to the reader in ways I don’t understand and cannot see for myself.

My heroine, Charlotte, is a sensible girl. She calculates the value of her own lovely face and decides she deserves to marry a fortune. So far, so very Jane Austen. Unfortunately, our hero, Charles, Viscount Carlington, has no fortune, but he does have a wicked trustee who causes all kinds of trouble for Charles and Charlotte.

There is a second love story concerning Charlotte’s mother and yet another concerning a pair of would-be star-crossed young lovers. How did I find the energy for three plots, let alone keep them straight in my head? I didn’t even have a typewriter back then, let alone a PC (they hadn’t been invented yet).