The Earl's Prize

Amy Bainbridge is a much tried heroine, her family ruined by her father's gambling is set even more firmly on the road to perdition by her brother following in his parent's footsteps. One evening, much to her disgust, he brings home a trio of friends to gamble. The next day Amy picks up a lottery ticket in the dishevilled room and decides to go along to the draw in a fit of curiosity. To her shock - the winning ticket is hers! Or rather she holds the winning ticket and has absolutely no idea who is its rightful owner. Wholly honest, she feels she must find the owner, very much over the horrified protests of her family who were delighted at the prospect of real money. She sets out to discover which gambler of the evening it could be.The rakish Earl of Tallant, Joss, was one of the aforementioned gamblers of that night and is in fact the true owner. She is both attracted to his person and repulsed by his character. He also finds himself attracted and very much interested against his inclinations (he is intent upon finding out what she will do with the ticket).The machinations of several shady characters and Tallant's own sister force the pair into an odd relationship wherein they both discover more than they bargained for.This is a completely charming tale, engaging hero and heroine. Neither are overly prone to theatrics and both in the end discover each other to be highly principled. The era was also believably created without modern mores irritatingly being slated home to the characters.A great read.

"The Earl's Prize" is a nice, unassuming romance novel about a rakish earl and the ordinary and well bred young lady who captures his fancy.Miss Amy Bainbridge knows precisely what means to have a gambler in the family. Her father was a gambler and quite frequently that meant living in less than desirable neighbourhoods, going without enough food or coal -- in short living a life of shabby gentility. Now her brother has grown up to become a gambler as well, and it's beginning to look as if a life of never ending scrimping and scraping is looming in front of Amy when an unexpected piece of good fortune lands at her feet. Amy finds a lottery ticket. And not just any lottery ticket, but a winning one at that. At first Amy thinks that the ticket belongs to her brother, Richard. But when it turns out not to be Richard's ticket, Amy realises that she will have to shed her quiet ways and go into Society in order to find the ticket's rightful owner. But this is a move that fills her with both excitement and dread, for this will bring her all the more into contact with the dreadful Earl of Tallant, a sinfully good-looking gentleman who is a gambler and rake, and who, for some reason or the other, seems bent on pursuing an acquaintance! Can Amy keep her good sense while she searches for the rightful owner of the lottery ticket, or will the Earl turn her head completely and make her forget all propriety... "The Earl's Prize" is a rather typical Regency-era romance novel that revolves around an earl who is not as black as he's been painted, and a young lady who's not as straight-laced as she thought she was -- in other words nothing new under the sun. What makes this novel so very enjoyable then was the manner in which Nicola Cornick allowed for her story to unfold and the two main characters she created. Both Amy and the earl are characters that most readers will be able to take to their hearts and root for them to find their hapily-ever-after ending. As I noted at the very beginning, this is a very nice and unassuming novel that will (unwittingly) steal your heart. A good read.