Rafael Sabatini

A footman is dressed up as a baronet by two gentlemen who need an heir produced, and the impostor turns out to have more honour than his sponsors - and to be in love with the woman the fraud is aimed at. Sabatini spoke five languages and chose English because, he said, all the best stories are told in it; the lion's skin of the title is Aesop's, and the ass inside it behaves better than the lions.