A Train to Love — Barbara Cartland

The beautiful Lola Fenton lives happily in a small cottage in the depths of Worcestershire, but she is suddenly orphaned when her father and mother are killed in a railway crash. Her uncle, the Earl of Kencombe, comes to the funeral and then tells her that, as she has no money, she will have to come and live with him. He obviously has no wish for her to do so, but feels that it is his duty as her legal Guardian. Her mother, Lady Cecilia Combe, had run away with her father and was ostracised by her family for doing so as he had been employed to be a Tutor to her brother. Lola feels that she cannot face the future with people who will continually be telling her how badly her mother had behaved and she therefore goes to London and visits an employment agency. As she is so lovely and so young it seems unlikely that there will be anything to suit her. However, the Marquis of Halaton has been desperately trying to find someone who could repair the curtains in his famous Elizabethan house and Lola, who has been taught by her mother, becomes his embroideress. How the Marquis, who has invented a special electrical engine for trains, persuades Lola into pretending to be his wife in order to overcome a tricky situation with an Italian financier. How she travels by train to Italy with the Marquis, how she is kidnapped and held to ransom by Macedonian partisans and how she finds the sublime love that her father and mother had for each other is all told in this intriguing romantic tale by BARBARA CARTLAND.