The Founding

Harlequin Enterprises Ltd.

Chapter One

A few stuck with me. A very few. And of those, even fewer authors whose work I avidly searched for in libraries and bookstores, and collected to place on my own bookshelves.

It was, admittedly, a long time ago. Before the Internet made finding copies of out-of-print books so easy. Before I had an actual paying job that enabled me to buy as many books as I wanted to own. In those days, collecting books was difficult for me, and few authors made the cut.

Georgette Heyer was, literally, the first. The first author whose work I not only collected, but bought second, third and even fourth copies of each title. Those early copies became fragile, you see, because I read them so many times, and I could never, ever throw a Heyer away just because it threatened to fall to bits if opened just one more time. They were Keepers, period.

So I'd somehow earn the money to buy a new copy, and put the old, tattered one gently on a shelf among my other Heyers. A treasure.

To this day, I still reread those books. I'll pick one up in an idle way, and the next thing I know I'm curled up in the nearest chair happily absorbed, transported to Regency England and surrounded by lords and ladies. Marveling at the amazingly three-dimensional characters Heyer brought to life and fascinated by her masterly grasp of human nature.

That first book leads to the next, and the next - and I find myself reading them all over again. Every few years, it seems, I have a Heyer-fest. And I enjoy the novels even more on the tenth or fifteenth reading than I did the first.

The thing about Heyer is that her characters are real people. They may be dressed as lords and ladies, and they may live in a society where the rules of behavior at least appear to be rigidly enforced, but Heyer's characters are as real as your family and friends, as real as the people in your own neighborhood.

Take, for instance, Adolphus Gillespie Vernon Ware, Duke of Sale. Grand-sounding name, isn't it? And from the moment of the twenty-four-year-old duke's birth, that grand name came attached not only to several other lofty titles, but also numerous vast estates - including a castle - much wealth, fond relations and many servants eager to indulge the duke's every whim.

But as you'll discover in The Foundling, Gilly is entirely fed up with being a grand duke with grand estates and surrounded by far, far too many people who insist he stand on his own two feet even as they fret that he might get those feet wet and catch a chill. Weary of his status and all the oppressive duties that go along with it, Gilly feels fenced in, restrained to the point of having no freedom at all.

He longs for an adventure. Even more, Gilly wonders what it would be like not to be a duke and have everyone around him bowing and eager to please. He wonders what it would be like to be simply "plain Mr. Dash, of Nowhere in Particular."

In typically amusing Heyer fashion, Gilly is given the opportunity to find out what it would be like to live as an average man without the grand titles and estates and wealth. And in so doing, the young Duke of Sale discovers who and what he really is.

Gilly is one of my all-time favorite Heyer heroes, because in the conventional sense, he isn't at all "heroic." He isn't tall, isn't dark, isn't particularly handsome, and when you first meet him he seems mild to the point of meekness. Not especially shy, but so self-effacing you'd never notice him in a crowd. And in a romance novel, you'd see him as the hero's friend, perhaps, or the heroine's younger brother.

But heroic? Gilly?

As a matter of fact ... yes. And how he becomes that hero is a lively adventure not to be missed, filled with humor and touched with just enough danger to make the journey even more entertaining.

As for Gilly's heroine, let's just say she isn't who you might expect her to be. In fact, she isn't who Gilly expects her to be, either. But she is, in the end, absolutely perfect for him.

Find a nice, comfortable place to curl up with this delight of a novel, and expect to be there a while, because you are not going to want to leave. If The Foundling is your first Georgette Heyer novel, congratulations - and I envy you a wonderful new world to explore.

You're gonna love it.

(Continues...)

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Excerpted from The Founding by Georgette Heyer Copyright © 2003 by Harlequin Enterprises Ltd.
Excerpted by permission. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.

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