The Black Moth

Seven years ago, Jack Carstares sacrificed his reputation to protect his younger brother from a gambling scandal. Once the Earl of Wyncham's heir, Jack has inherited the title but lives apart from respectable society. Back in England under an assumed name, he has taken up a decidedly unsuitable occupation for a gentleman: highway robbery.

The disgrace Jack accepted still casts a shadow over his family. His brother Richard knows the truth, but admitting it would expose the sacrifice that has shaped both their lives. Jack, meanwhile, seems determined to remain an outsider, even as old friendships and unfinished business draw him toward the world he abandoned.

Then he crosses paths with Diana Beauleigh, a spirited young woman threatened by the notorious Duke of Andover. Accustomed to getting what he wants, Andover has no intention of accepting Diana's refusal. Jack's intervention sets him against a dangerous adversary-and brings him unexpectedly close to a woman who might make him reconsider his exile. But how can a disgraced aristocrat and secret highwayman offer her an honorable future?

Set in Georgian England, The Black Moth mixes masked identities, swordplay, sharp dialogue, family secrets, and a developing romance. Jack's easy courage conceals a deep sense of obligation, while the contrast between his reputation and his conduct raises a question that runs through the novel: what makes a gentleman-his standing in society, or the choices he makes?

Published in 1921 when Georgette Heyer was nineteen, The Black Moth was her first novel. Originally conceived as a story to entertain her convalescing younger brother, it anticipates many pleasures of her later historical fiction: lively exchanges, intricate social complications, flamboyant aristocrats, and characters whose honor is tested by love and loyalty. Set in the eighteenth-century Georgian period rather than the later Regency, it has a particularly strong strain of swashbuckling adventure.

For readers drawn to historical romance with wit, danger, and a hero living under a cloud of scandal, The Black Moth offers the spirited beginning of Heyer's remarkable career.