Lady Athlyne

Lady Athlyne is a romance novel written by Bram Stoker and first published in 1908.

Joy Ogilvie listens, along with her aunt Judith, to the story of an Irish nobleman named Earl Athlyne. This man arouses great interest in both of them to the point that they decide, as a joke, that Joy will pretend to be Lady Athlyne. However, the mysterious woman who tells him the story about Earl Athlyne warns them of the danger of supplanting her name, since from that moment their fate has been sealed.

The joke remains secret between Joy and Judith, but one day that name is heard by Joy's father, a colonel from Kentucky, and he gets angry with them since associating his daughter's name with an unknown man could damage her reputation in the future.

The real Lord Athlyne is a prisoner in South Africa and rumors even reach his ears that a woman is pretending to be his wife. When he is released, he decides to go to New York to clear up the situation. There, the couple ends up falling in love but a series of events will jeopardize their adventure, including Joy's father...

"On the forenoon of a day in February, 1899, the White Star S. S. Cryptic forced her way from Pier No. 48 out into the Hudson River through a mass of floating ice, which made a moving carpet over the whole river from Poughkeepsie to Sandy Hook."