Heart of Gold — Christine Pope

In a Victorian England not so different from our own, Lavinia Greene has been raised to be a proper young lady. When she receives a summons to Romania from her eccentric Uncle Malcolm, Lavinia finds herself drawn into a web of mayhem and murder as foreign agents attempt to seize her uncle's latest invention. She flees for her life, accompanied by her uncle's assistant, the diverting Joshua Jones, but when he fails to join her in England, she fears the worst has happened. However, she attempts to put the disastrous events in Romania behind her, even as she draws the attentions of the oh-so-eligible Earl of Langdon. As Lavinia finds solace in the earl's arms, she begins to realize that the secret her uncle had been hiding affects not only her, but the entire world as well.