Sovereign's Key — Rosalind Laker

Fostered out a birth, Theresa Marlow, highwayman's daughter, was growing up on a farm in the tiny Sussex hamlet of Bognor when a rich merchant, Sir Richard Hotham, came to it by chance and decided to stay. He invested his entire fortune in the fishing hamlet, turning it into a fashionable and elegant resort that sprang up to rival Brighton. Against this fast-changing background Theresa rose from linen-maid in Sir Richard's household to become a lady of fashion herself. Yet it was the three men she loved who influenced her destiny: Andrew Harvey, the tavern-boy who went to sea; David Seymour, the young Excise officer who met her on the beach by night; and Lord Jonathan Quinnley, Sussex land-owner and compulsive gambler. It was her obsessional passion for Jonathan that set her feet on a path more terrible and violent than anything she could have dreamed possible.