Revenge is never as sweet as the ability to find peace.The Honorable Olivia Beaumont, eldest daughter of Viscount Hereford, wants revenge. Following an ill-advised game of faro with a powerful duke, her father lost everything and then suffered a fatal heart attack. Now she wants that man to pay and suffer as much as her father did. But the only way she can do so is to enlist the help of the most shunned man in the ton—the disgraced Duke of Skeffington. It matters ...

Engaging the heart instead of the fists can often make a more powerful statement.Miss Louisa Harcourt's life isn't what she'd envisioned. A widow, she returned home to protect her younger brother from domestic threats, but that put her into the soup as well. After constantly rebuffing unwanted attentions, she's wearied of living in fear. Knowing something must be done, she hires someone who can teach her the skills she needs to defend herself—a champion in fisticuffs—but h...

At times, believing is more important than seeing in matters of love and snowflakes.It's Christmastide 1817 and Miss Christiana Smythe, daughter of a squire, is not looking forward to the social obligations of the season. Wanting nothing more than to care for the area's sick and ailing animal population, doing the rounds in glittering ballrooms festooned with holiday finery makes her lightheaded. Yet it's a necessity to realizing the dream of love.Evan Tennant, Ear...

What doesn't kill you might make you stronger unless it forces you to become what you hate…Alexander Sutcliffe—the 8th Duke of Ravenhurst—has finally returned to England after a twenty-year absence, and he wants the man who destroyed his life punished. At the age of twenty-two, after being forced to witness his parents' brutal murder, he was kidnapped from his bed in London and shanghaied onto a ship to toil in the English navy. Finally able to escape that life and the com...

When in doubt, always do the right thing, especially when love is in the offing.As the year 1818 comes to an end, Lady Theodosia Cavendish, only daughter to the Marquess of Armestead, pretends to enjoy society's glittering ballrooms and endless rounds of parties, for she has other, more interesting projects to fulfill her. An opponent to the men who build their fortunes on the backs of the slave trade, she makes certain social injustice is always at the forefront in London...

When a second chance at love comes with a new perspective, chase it with eyes—and a heart—wide open.Julianna Leah Winslow, Lady Mayborne, is three years a widow. While packing items to clear clutter, she finds an antique jade elephant among her husband's possessions. When a secret panel pops open revealing a cryptic note with the name of his best friend—the man she'd wanted to marry as a young girl—she summons James no matter that seeing him again will open old wounds not ...

At times a second chance at love and friendship is tangled in grief until one learns to forgive.Ex-spy and Home Office agent Elliott Thorne—Viscount Aldridge and newly minted Earl of Foxborough—is still a bachelor at the age of forty-one. Now that he's finally gotten his sister married off, he can turn his attention to perhaps entering the same state for himself, but oddly enough, he doesn't know how, so a harvest ball at his country estate seems like a good start....

Life can either snake around you with a strangle hold or produce the most exquisite flowers…At the advanced age of six and thirty, Mr. Jameson Ridley has become content with what he wants out of life. After spending years in India studying the care and cultivation of tea, he became a botanist who specializes in flowers and vines. When he's invited to his best friend's estate in the Irish countryside, he accepts with alacrity, for the opportunity to catalog...

Shadows of the past can either haunt or heal.Ambrose Colin Heathermore, the fourteenth Marquess of Hereford wants to be left alone. Now that he's back in London and has put life as a celebrated spy behind him, he must take up the reins of his real life and attend to his title. Which he will after a quick tryst with an experienced lightskirt at a ball. If it will help him forget the woman he first loved in France, all the better.Lady Mary Clarke, a daughter of the D...

Can a marriage arranged in childhood survive the earl's infamous reputation?The Honorable Miss Evangeline Rigsby has been engaged from the age of five to a man about whom she has only heard improper tales. On her twenty-fifth birthday, she is sent to the wild Cornish coast to wed her reclusive betrothed, sight unseen, and with no choice in the matter, for he holds her father's vowels and the mortgage to his townhouse in London. Beyond annoyed, she is more ...

Things are not always what they seem—in life, love, and murder.Ennui has taken over Major Felix Kourier's life. Retired from military service as well as Bow Street, which left him with an injury to his leg that required a prosthetic, he is missing the excitement and thrills he used to know. When his sister badgers him into attending a summer house party with her, he hopes it's exactly what he needs to stave off boredom with the caveat that he won't be matched; he doesn't n...

Sometimes fate doesn't give you what you want because something better is in the offing.Captain Elias Frampton is a man without purpose. Five months after being jilted, he's ready for a new chapter of his life. Undecided about whether he should return to the sea or find a position in England, he embarks on a trip up the Cornwall coast, but his coach is caught in a winter storm squall, forcing him to take the last room at a posting inn of a fishing village. It's just the pl...