No doubts here , as Lynn Smith says in her review, LMF is almost certainly a rip off of the famous Georgette Heyer's ' These old shades'. There's another novel by Cartland called 'A halo for the devil' which also blatantly plagiarises ' These old shades'. It's almost as though Cartland liked 'These old shades' so much she thought she'd turn it into 2 seperate novels .
Many of Cartland's novels like ' The unpredictable wife' are a rehash of ' Friday's Child' and 'The convenient marriage' by Heyer right down to the infamous race with Lady Letty Lade ! I read that Heyer was furious with Cartland though plagiarism was fervently denied by her sons - Ian & Ron Cartland.
Written against the background of the French Revolution ,the h of LMF -Ame, is a mysterious orphan who has always lived in a convent raised by nuns . She runs away and meets the H who takes her all around Paris as his page disguised as a boy . Ame discovers that her mother is a grand court lady who is close to Marie Antoinette. Interestingly the mother is a real person who actually lived during those turbulent times .
Where this novel stands out is it does not follow the traditional happy ending of all romance novels in general and Barbara Cartland in particular . Ame realises she can't hurt her biological mother's reputation and destroy the increasingly unpopular Marie Antoinette ,so she goes back to the convent and becomes a nun (which may not be a bad thing as she has never really lived a normal life and she enjoys her religion). It's an untypically sad ending and the 13 year old me was very upset by it .....until I grew older and discovered ' These old shades' and comforted myself that Ame is actually Leonie who gets her duke in the end !