THE RELUCTANT HEIRESS

Asked to help a young lady in distress, Regency buck and amateur sleuth Charles, Earl of Moriston, finds her to be beautiful redhead Caroline Malcolm, who wants to find her father. ""Forgive me, but how did you come to lose him?"" ""I haven't lost him. I have never had him."" Her paternity, though unknown, has been memorialized by the arrival of an enormous but anonymous diamond on each birthday. In no time Charles is hot on the track of the donor, aided by his large and gabby family--but while he is kept busy with more clues than he knows what to do with, someone is trying to murder Caro's Oxonian brother Richard. A nice fast trot, twice around the park and straight on to the altar.