Viscount Vagabond

In escape from the ignominy of an arranged marriage with an elderly, fortune-hunting contemporary of her father, Catherine Pelliston takes off for London where there is expectation of employment as a schoolmistress. Despite her purposely prim appearance she is abducted, drugged and imprisoned in a bawdy house. There the handsome Lord Rand, a soldier returning from the Continental war, and engaging in a last carousing before submitting to the protocols of the London season, is intrigued by this unlikely denizen of a brothel. So begins another fast-paced Regency from the author of Isabella and The English Witch. Against the familiar accoutrements of the ton's social scene, the two central characters, alike in stubbornness, misconceptions and unconventional manners, are attractively engaged in clearing the hurdles to their unsurprising union. (Dec.)