Gypsy Legacy: The Marquis

He doesn’t need a wife. She doesn’t want a husband. Destiny’s not listening.

Book 2 in the Gypsy Legacy Series

As children, Brand Waring, heir to the Duke of Warringham, and his brother were kidnapped and sold to a plantation in the West Indies. Now Brand is back to wreak vengeance on those responsible for his brother’s subsequent death. The last thing he wants, or needs, is to be distracted by an instant attraction to a flighty Society belle.

Felicia Collings has found it easy to refuse every marriage proposal, thanks to a ring left to her by her gypsy great-grandmother. Reportedly it will lead her to the man whom she is destined to marry. To her relief, the ring has been blessedly silent on this issue. Until Brand recognizes it, and sparks fly.

In spite of himself, Brand finds himself drawn to the beauty, and to the wounded soul reflected in her eyes. At his gentle hands, Felicia begins to learn what it means to be cherished and loved.

Then the past rears its head to threaten their fragile happiness. As Brand begins to doubt whether vengeance is as sweet as a lifetime with Felicia, he finds himself racing to save them both from not one cold-blooded killer—but two.

A panther. A prince. A promise. Can destiny tie the knot?

Gypsy Legacy, Book 3

During a magical childhood summer, a gypsy woman gave Lady Amanda Cookeson a black panther statuette, promising that the man who came to claim it would also claim her heart. Amanda believes the Earl of Wynton is the prince she has awaited. Yet his reluctance to declare them anything more than friends leaves her wondering if she waited in vain.

If he wasn’t the last of his line, Jon Kenton, Earl of Wynton, wouldn’t marry at all. Since leaving his inheritance to the Crown is out of the question, however, he is compelled to search for the statuette his great-grandmother promised him. His quest leaves him empty handed—and secretly relieved. Finding the statuette would mean embracing the gypsy roots he has long denied.

Amanda is perfect countess material: lovely, admirable and—he thinks—statueless. Their passion is unquenchable…until the gypsy magic Jon thought he’d buried nearly destroys his future with Amanda.

Double trouble—with a twist.

Two months. Just two more months and Sarah Standish will be twenty-one and free to come out of hiding. Not long ago she was on the brink of marrying the man of her dreams—until she discovered his complicity with her uncle’s plan to gain control of her missing father’s substantial fortune.

A wounded man appears at the inn where she lives under an assumed name, and she’s shocked to discover it’s her would-be groom. He seems to have no memory of her, yet her traitorous heart remembers.

Max Dayton awakens from a fevered dream to find a vengeful angel hovering over him. When he realizes she’s mistaken him for his twin brother, his protective instincts kick in. There must be some reason his brother assumed Max’s identity…and some connection to this dazzling beauty and the father she insists is not dead.

In a quest to untangle the twisted trail of lies that threw them together, Sarah and Max journey to London, where the mystery grows darker and deeper. And the fragile beginnings of love are threatened by a secret someone would kill to keep.

Warning: Contains a war hero, runaway bride, jealous twin, greedy uncle, and a good reason to check names before proceeding. At least the dog knows who is who.

Sometimes, the greatest casualty of war is trust.

Lionel Cantrell has all but given up hope of finding his missing wife and child. He left them in the care of his parents and older brother while he went abroad to fight the French, only to return to a marriage in shambles, a daughter who cannot possibly be his, and his wife and son fled to parts unknown.

Until now. At a former comrade’s house party, Lion comes face to face with the object of his five-year search. Emma, whose cold reception is keenly edged with barely concealed panic.

When Emma’s perfect marriage to her childhood sweetheart crumbled into an unendurable year of humiliation and torment, she had no choice but to take their son—and her sanity—to build a new life under an assumed name. Her chance meeting with Lion threatens to expose long-buried emotional scars. And physical ones, the origins of which he must never know.

Emma’s stubborn refusal to explain why she won’t return home only fuels Lion’s relentless curiosity. So does their undeniable passion. Time is on his side, and his well of patience is deep. But Emma’s trauma runs far deeper…perhaps too deep for love to reach.

Warning: Contains a heroine caught in a treacherous web of deceit not of her making, two adorable children, and a hero determined enough to make things right.

Banished and disowned for saving a stranger’s life…

In Regency England, lineage and vouchers to Almack’s are everything, but Pamela Clarkdale has neither. After her father casts her out, she considers herself fortunate to have obtained a position as a companion to an elderly widow.

Kitt Covington has sworn off Almack’s and marriage. Why attend one when he has no interest in the other? Guilt, however, is a powerful motivator. Knowing he caused Pamela to be thrown out of her home, he proposes a sham betrothal between them to ease his conscience.

Kitt’s offer is tempting and Pamela agrees, with the caveat that the betrothal will disappear at the end of the season. But not only is Pamela refused vouchers to Almack’s, her family is scheming to destroy her to protect a secret she doesn’t realize she knows. When the twenty-year-old web of lies and deceit begins to unravel, will Pamela and Kitt discover that Almack’s isn’t really that important after all?

Her family has a death wish. For her.

Lord Marcus Waring married Corinna Houghton with the best of intentions—to protect her should anything happen to her brother while both he and Marcus are serving in India. That the child bride is underage is but a small footnote in his family’s long history of scandal.

News that his wife has died in a carriage accident stabs him with regret, but with no reason to question the report, he extends his stay until another near-scandal brings him home—eight years after his secret marriage.

Corinna is in hiding. Alone in the world after her parents’ deaths, despised by her family, unwanted even by the husband who seems to have forgotten her. When she discovers her temporary governess position is in the home of Marcus’s brother, she holds out a secret hope that she will at last learn his whereabouts.

When wife and erstwhile husband meet again, it is as strangers. Gentle, fragile sparks of attraction and trust flicker to life, but their respective dark histories threaten to overshadow any possibility of happiness. Especially when it becomes clear that someone in her family still wishes her dead.

Warning: Marrying someone in the middle of the night, without a license, at age fourteen, might be a tad illegal, but love doesn’t care about legalities.

An inconvenient proposal.

Ian MacKay, Laird of Graenfrae, has no use for love or marriage. However, his stepfather’s will mandates that marriage is what he must have…to an Englishwoman.

A sensible man, Ian develops a list of requirements in a wife: Plain, moderately dowered, older and practical. He thinks he has found the perfect candidate in Lady Annabelle.

Labeled The Ordinary her first season, Annabelle longs for a man who will see her as beautiful and love her as her father loved her mother. When she meets Ian, she thinks she has at last found that man. Until his proposal, in which he has the audacity to list his “requirements.”

She refuses his proposal. He informs her that she will marry him at the end of the season.

The battle of wills is on.

Some wallflowers bloom at night...

A Spindle Cove Novella

Violet Winterbottom is a quiet girl. She speaks six languages, but seldom raises her voice. She endured bitter heartbreak in perfect silence. The gentlemen aren't beating down her door.

Until the night of the Spindle Cove Christmas ball, when a mysterious stranger crashes into the ballroom and collapses at Violet's feet. His coarse attire and near-criminal good looks would put any sensible young lady on her guard. He's wet, chilled, bleeding, and speaking in an unfamiliar tongue.

Only Violet understands him. And she knows he's not what he seems.

She has one night to draw forth the secrets of this dangerously handsome rogue. Is he a smuggler? A fugitive? An enemy spy? She needs answers by sunrise, but her captive would rather seduce than confess. To learn his secrets, Violet must reveal hers—and open herself to adventure, passion, and the unthinkable... Love.

Warning: The heroine packs a pistol, the hero curses in multiple languages, and together they steam up a cold winter’s night.

To capture love, sometimes you have to grab it by the horns…

If a woman could die of humiliation, Cecily Hale would have perished three hours ago. Luke Trenton had finally returned to Swinford Manor, only to cruelly spurn her long-held love. But she couldn’t conveniently die of shame on the spot—oh, no. Instead she joined her friends on this ridiculous search for a legendary man-beast. Now she’ll die here—alone in the woods, at the tusks of a snarling boar.

Luke left for war a dashing youth and returned a man—just not the same man Cecily fell in love with. His passion for her is stronger than ever, but the ravages of battle changed him in ways she wouldn’t understand. Pushing her away was supposed to save her, not throw her into the path of another inhuman creature…or into the arms of another man.

For it is a man who rescues Cecily, just as the boar attacks. A mysterious, silent man who disappears into the woods, leaving her with just a glimpse—of a fleeing white deer. Could her rescuer be the man-beast of local lore?

A dangerous myth has captured Cecily’s imagination, putting Luke on the horns of a dilemma. Unless he summons the passion and tenderness to win her back, he could lose her forever…to the Werestag.

To survive, she’ll have to trust him with all her secrets.

The Secrets Trilogy book 1

Nick is back.

After eight years of facing public scandal and private humiliation with her head held high, Isobel’s courage fails when the man she never stopped loving returns and asks her to marry him. Once he discovers her secret, he won’t visit her bed more than once. And she can’t bear his rejection.

Nicholas, Marquis of Cardington, is confident he can cope with the baggage Isobel carries from her first marriage. It doesn’t matter that the beautiful widow once left him to elope with another man. After all, he was partly to blame for that disaster. All that matters is he has always loved her, and now she’s free to accept his proposal.

Only on their wedding night does Nick learn the terrible secret Isobel has harbored for eight long years. To win his wife’s trust will take every ounce of tenderness he possesses—when what he really wants is to show her the passion he saved for her and her alone.

But just as Isobel begins to believe her heart is safe with Nick, the blackmailers who drove her first husband to suicide reappear. And they want their pound of flesh.

Isobel must finally trust Nick will all her secrets—and her life—or their enemies will destroy them both.