[weatherwax]

The first of Georgette Heyer's novels, written in 1921 when she was 19.

Jack Carstares, oldest son of the Earl Wyncham, disgraced six years earlier, returns home and becomes a highwayman so that he is able to live in the land he loves without detection. One day while out riding he foils an abduction plot mastered by the infamous Duke of Andover. Injured while rescuing the damsel in distress, he is taken home by the thankful Diana Beauleigh and her Aunt Betty, to recover. Mystery and intrigue continue to the melodrama's end.

This is a reader comment on Amazon:
As reading material, the book is highly engaging and completely satisfying; several love stories unravel at once, and the introductions of Fanny and Lavinia are sheer narrative genius; in the span of a page, Heyer lightly sketches a character who emerges whole and vibrant and entirely dedicated to her own pursuits, whatever they may be. And who cannot adore the courtship scene where Jack, painfully wounded in the rescue of Diana and recovering at her house, is first properly introduced to the lady in question by having her command him to help her sort silks and dumping a basket of colorful threads over his earlish knee? As a romance, the book may show a failure to focus at length on the developing relationship between hero and heroine (for certain the 'secondary' characters often edge them out in wit and color), but as a novel with romantic elements, telling an entertaining story of the attractions and perils of upper-class English society during the Georgian period, it succeeds; and, as a Heyer, it cannot disappoint.