Bereaved of her beloved father at sixteen, and now her mother, Belinda Wyncombe's only comfort is that she still has the family's home. Until she finds her irresponsible stepfather, Captain D?Arcy Rowland, has squandered their money and fraudulently mortgaged the house. This means he faces jail while Belinda faces penury, unless she complies with her stepfather's shameful scheme to gain and ruthlessly exploit the trust of the famed adventurer ?Lucky? Logan, who has made a fortune with his legendary ability to find diamonds, gold and other precious metals wherever he travels. Every fibre of Belinda's being recoils from such deceit ? more so when she finds that Marcus ?Lucky? Logan is not the greedy fortune hunter of her imagining but a generous, handsome and heroic man. When murderous thugs come for Marcus in the dead of night, it is Belinda who raises the alarm and saves his life. And when he kisses her, Belinda is suddenly, utterly, in love ? but surely her love is doomed by her deceit?
Traveling the world, Marcus Lucky Logan unearths one astounding discovery after another--securing the fortunes of those who invest in his finds and making a name for himself. Belinda Wyncombe is having the opposite problem--her stepfather gambled away all their money. To avoid going to jail or a workhouse, she comes up with a plan to find the secret to Lucky Logan's success.
Spoiler alert:
Pot boiler. Barbara Cartland books have unsatisfactory endings. Forty-five years ago I was less critical and could not wait for the romantic ending with a kiss but now I find all the dangling threads she leaves hanging are annoying. In this book, for example, it appears that it all happens in a single day, all too conveniently each jigsaw piece slots in quickly. She gets the job, trunks delivered, eats lunch, employer naps, Marcus arrives, she saves him and falls in love, she finds the answer and leaves and her step father is magically rich. She returns home and Marcus arrives the following day.

The identical tigers were wasted, eyebright should have been dealt with, her step father should have remembered her....

There should have been.....

but then I am finding such cases in every one of her books, slap dash writing at best. A rush to the ending, scattering story bits and just leaving them instead of putting flesh on the bones of the story. I believe this is the case with most of her later books. This was not a good Barbara Cartland. ( )