A vicar's daughter with a greedy brother is drugged and offered for sale at a country tavern. Alasdair, a depressed gentleman, pays for her and lets her sleep in his bed, then having heard her story offers to wed her to save her name though she is not of his class. Mary Smith decides that the Marquis is insane - but she cannot very well refuse.

In HERO OF MY HEART Alasdair is an opium addict to quell battle memories; this is 1814 and the reign of Napoleon is not long over. Saving a schoolteacher by driving to Scotland for a hasty wedding may be more than he is capable of, but he intends to try. Devoid of his drug, he goes into withdrawal and Mary, not understanding, thinks he is ill - a frightening prospect. She wants to go to London to find her mother, not knowing if she'll even be welcomed. Without a man's protection or money she won't get very far, so she decides that all she can do is to look after her potential husband, even if that means fighting off a highwayman and well-bred rogues who intend to discredit Alasdair.

The characters and situations are so different in this romance that it really holds the reader's attention, and Mary is a fine practical girl, unmarried at twenty-five because nobody ever asked, determined to survive. The blacksmith's wedding is brief and the couple celebrate in bed, far from the society wedding that Alasdair could have expected. As a schoolteacher Mary is better suited than most fine misses to managing money and a recalcitrant student, but she still has a long road to face before London.

I thought the withdrawal symptoms ended rather quickly. But coming off opium must have been very difficult - it was available as an ingredient of laudanum, though Megan Frampton shows the concentrated form as pills. I really did not like the staccato punctuation of "This. Is. My. Coachman." Not only does it read badly, English aristocracy didn't and don't speak that way. The action occurs around a lot of travelling by various means, bringing home the reality that travel took a long time when the fastest one could cover any real distance was eight miles an hour. Both characters are on a journey of self- discovery, and they find that they are stronger together than apart. HERO OF MY HEART is an interesting adult novel for those who enjoy historical romances.