The impulsive and rakish Marquis of Troon is due to be married to the disreputable but passionate Lady Dilys Powick in direct opposition to the wishes and advice of his closest friends. The Marquis then goes ahead and arranges a spectacular steeplechase with large prizes for the winners in order to celebrate his nuptials. When one of the contestants dies unexpectedly of a heart attack, the Marquis is stunned to discover that he has been named in his will as the Guardian of the contestant's daughter, the sensible and charitable Valeta Lingfield, who is also very beautiful.An encounter at the Marquis's superb stately home with a mistreated climbing boy tests the unlikely relationship between Valeta and the Marquis as she is determined to look after the boy until he can be returned safely to his parents.And further conflict, intrigue and danger follow a meeting with the villainous sweep, who is from a notorious criminal area of London. Will the lovely Valeta return safely from...

As a cousin of Queen Victoria, the beautiful Princess Marigold is obliged to yield to the Queen's wishes when it comes to marriage – and the Monarch is most reluctant to allow her to marry the man she loves, Prince Holden of Allenberg, because she views his tiny European Principality as insignificant and uninfluential.So, although the Queen assents to their engagement, she puts obstacles in the way of their marriage in the hope that Princess Marigold will fall out of love with Prince Holden if she can keep them apart for any length of time.One such obstacle is the Royal order that Marigold travels to Greece to represent the Queen at the State funeral of Prince Eumenus.Determined to stay with her beloved Holden, the Princess comes up with a cunning plan.She will send another young woman in her place – and Prince Holden knows the ideal candidate, the beautiful young Vicar's daughter called Avila Grandell, who looks uncannily like the...

Wandering dreamily through the Great Hall of Hampton Court Palace, the beautiful eighteen-year-old Zorina bumps into a startlingly handsome well-dressed young man who immediately steals her heart. Hardly able to take hers eyes off his face, she finds herself exchanging tales with him of the ghosts that reputedly walk the Haunted Gallery. She shows him the many fascinating treasures of The Palace that she has come to think of as her own and then she finds that his name is Rudolf.And when he says to her, "Au revoir, Zorina, if you are the Spirit of Hampton Court, you are more beautiful than any Queen or Princess who ever graced it!", a heart-stopping adventure of love begins. Zorina has no idea who he is or where he is staying or even how to contact him, but she is counting the minutes until she can see him again.But then Queen Victoria makes an announcement that dashes all the hopes that are rising in her heart. As the daughter of a Princess, she is of Royal blood and therefore...

Dashing, handsome and much in demand with Society ladies, the Duke of Oswestry is trapped by the beautiful but duplicitous Lady Marlene with whom he has just finished an ill-advised love affair.Claiming that she is with child and, falsely, that he is the father, she demands that he marries her or she will cause a great Society scandal, something that the Duke in his worst nightmares would never tolerate.He has previously vowed never to marry, but it seems that now there is no escape for him until a beautiful young girl appears at his front door begging him to save her from two men who are relentlessly pursuing her.Suddenly the Duke has an idea. He can save them both from their own pursuers simply by pretending that he is engaged to this lovely young waif, Udela Hayward.Little does he suspect, however, the violent passions that his pretence betrothal provokes.When there is a diabolical attempt on his life by his jealous younger brother,...

Sir Robert Westbury has two young daughters – Heloise, the beautiful "English Rose" and her demure older sister Lydia, who lives with the fact that her father is disappointed that she was not a son!Since their mother died when they were children, self-effacing Lydia has grown accustomed to taking care of Heloise pandering to her every whim. When it is announced that her sister is to marry the dashingly handsome Earl of Royston – and that he is whisking Heloise away to be married in the exotic paradise of Hawaii – Lydia is expected to accompany her as a "lady's maid". Unlike her sullen sister, she is thrilled by the prospect – and, transfixed by the Earl's charisma and charm, she begins to fall in love with the man she can never have.But Fate takes a hand in the shape of a storm on the voyage that casts Lydia and the Earl overboard and washes them up alone on a desert island: the Island of Love, which will change Lydia's life forever.

Although her father is the acclaimed Music Hall performer, Keegan Kenway, his young daughter, Isla, who is ethereally beautiful, is never allowed even to go near the Music Halls, which were not deemed suitable places for a lady to be seen at. Now that her mother is dead, her father is close to bankruptcy and so desperate for the proceeds of a benefit show that, when his co-star is taken ill, he is reluctantly forced to allow Isla to take her place for the evening and he sings his famous sons Champagne Charlie and It was only a dream.After a supremely successful performance when Isla and he are acclaimed by an enthusiastic audience, Keegan Kenway disappears to a late night party and Isla, declining the invitation, goes home alone, where the party's host, Lord Polegate, arrives to inform her that her father has collapsed and is still unconscious. In her dismay and anxiety, Isla agrees to accompany the persistent Lord Polegate to his country house, where she gradually realises that...

Sunny Naples is dark in the shadow of death as typhoid decimates its people, including the father lovely young Forella Claye adored with all her heart... Fleeing for her life, she arrives, forlorn, at her aunt and uncle's London house. Horrified to find they mean to offload her in marriage by hook or by crook, she flees again... this time on a horse from the stable of the impossibly handsome Hungarian Prince János Kovác. With the Prince hot on her heels, she gallops to faster and faster to freedom – until finally Forella is captured... And so is her heart.

The beautiful Lencia is the image of her dear departed Mama and so is still the apple of the eye of her widowed father, the Earl of Armeron. Knowing how deeply Lencia and her younger sister, Alice, are missing their mother, their father promises to take them to see the fabulous historic Châteaux of the Loire Valley in France of which the most exciting and impressive of all is Château Chaumont. But to their chagrin, their hopes are totally dashed when the Earl returns from a trip to the South of France with a new wife on his arm, a stepmother who sees Lencia's beauty as distinct competition for her husband's attention and so she becomes increasingly hostile to the two sisters.Nevertheless the sisters have their hearts set on their French adventure and set off in secret, Lencia disguised in her late mother's clothes and her make-up to look like an older Society lady who is chaperoning the young Alice.By sheer chance they happen to meet on their journey the dashingly handsome Duc...

Ever since the cruel death of her beloved brother, David at the Battle of Waterloo, Lady Ilina Bury's father, the fifth Duke of Tetbury, has taken out his grief on her and now he too has died and his will reiterates his contempt of her. He leaves the beautiful nothing but the extremely valuable collection of jewels that had been given to his ancestor, the second Duke of Tetbury, by the Nizam of Hyderabad. The trouble is that, although legendary, these jewels are also almost certainly mythical and Ilina and David have been searching Tetbury Abbey for them for years without any success.All but destitute she dreads the arrival of her father's heir and rather than be a burden, she decides to pretend that she is a paid employee of the poverty-stricken estate.And when the handsome new Duke finally does arrive from the Far East, he is visibly disappointed by what he sees, but worse still he says that he intends to abandon the estate, all its loyal staff and close up The Abbey for...

Handsome, wealthy and always hotly pursued by London's Society beauties, the Duke of Wydeminster is a gentleman very much in demand – yet his affaires de coeur invariably leave him dissatisfied and feeling trapped, especially his current one with the beautiful Fenella Newbury, who is married to a much older husband. What he needs in his life is not more love affairs, but a new challenge and very much sooner than he could have expected one presents itself. First in the baffling form of a strange young woman called Aldora, who accosts him in unlikely circumstances and insists that her mother intends to force him to marry her, while also avowing her deep hatred of the Duke for reasons that he cannot fathom.Next comes the revelation that Aldora's mother, the ambitious Marchioness of Berkhampton has suggested to Queen Victoria that the Duke should become the new Viceroy of India – a position hardly less than that of a King! But there is a catch. Aldora indeed spoke the...

Man about town and something of a 'ladies' man' the new Earl of Rockbrook has given little thought to a liaison at Windsor Castle in which one of the Queen's Ladies-in-Waiting, Lady Louise Welwyn, appears suddenly in his bedroom in the middle of the night. So he is appalled when he learns that Lady Louise's formidable mother expects him to marry her. Her motivation is clear, although penniless at the time, he has since unexpectedly inherited the title of his family's Earldom and the huge estate of Rock Castle after his uncle's and cousin's death in a train crash.He realises that he could never be happy with Lady Louise and so he flees her and London for the safety of the countryside where he breaks his collarbone in a riding accident and is knocked unconscious.When he awakens, he finds that he is being nursed by a lovely country girl called 'Purilla'. She is beautiful, demure and intelligent – in fact everything he ever wanted in a wife, so he persuades her to save him by...

Not only has beautiful young Bettina Charlwood lost her beloved mother but, made all but destitute by her father's constant gambling, now she has to leave the French school her now-deceased Godmother had financed. Now death strikes once more as her chaperone dies on the ferry from to Dover – and Bettina is saved by an earnest young gentleman called Lord Eustace Veston.Arriving home, she and her father are invited by the famous Duke of Alveston to accompany him on a trip to Egypt for the historic opening of the Suez Canal. Another surprise awaits when she finds her father has also invited the Duke's half brother, whom he hopes she will marry. And that half-brother is none other than her Good Samaritan, Lord Eustace.But while Bettinna finds the Duke almost impossibly handsome and awe-inspiring, Eustace, by contrast reveals himself to be a mean-spirited 'do-gooder' – and something of a bully to boot. And despite Eustace's assumption that she will happily marry him, she soon finds...

After centuries of violence between the feuding McBrara and MacSteel Clans in the Scottish Highlands, a fragile peace is about to break into a new war when one of the MacSteels' shepherds is murdered allegedly by the McBraras.In a desperate attempt to avoid further bloodshed before the imminent visit of the English King George IV, the Laird of the MacSteels proposes that they unite the Clans with a marriage and the Earl of Braradale agrees somewhat reluctantly. And so the Laird's daughter, the elfin young beauty, Fyna, is obliged to marry a man she has never even met – the Earl of Braradale himself.Thus they are both ready to enter into a loveless marriage to save their Clans from further bloodletting and strife.For his part the Earl is dreading the marriage, imagining that she will be 'pious and heavily built', while for her part Fyna too dreads a loveless union with a man she does not love and who will look down at her as his inferior. As the two Clans celebrate their...

Returning to his family estate after a long absence in India serving under the much-loved and now-deceased Viceroy, Michael, the handsome Earl of Rayburne, is appalled to find that his estate and the local village have gone to rack and ruin.It seems that his uncle to whom he had entrusted them has embezzled everything that the Earl owns, including the contents of Rayburne Castle and has decamped with his loot to America.Penniless and unable to pay the estate's workers and pensioners, who are on the verge of starvation, he has no choice but to throw himself on the mercy of Lord Frazer, the owner of the neighbouring estate and his family's bitter enemy in an age-old land dispute over a wood.To the Earl's astonishment the hateful Lord Frazer offers him not a loan but a gift, amounting to fifty thousand ponds, in order to combine their two estates.But there is one other condition. The Earl must marry Lord Frazer's young daughter, Ansella, whom he has...

In St. Petersburg on a mission to glean intelligence for the Prime Minister on the likely intentions of Czar Alexander with regard to the ongoing war in which both Russia and the UK are at war with Napoleon's France, the dashing and eminently eligible bachelor Duke of Welminster is beset by diplomatic problems.The War aside, there is the issue the Princess who is pressing upon him the attractions of her daughter Tania. At thirty-three, the handsome Duke has vowed never to marry but has no choice but to agree to meet the young woman.But when he does, he finds Tania dancing with another young girl called Zoia. This other girl seems to him 'as if she moves amongst trees covered with blossom and the whole world awakens with spring'. Instantly he is entranced.Then when he discovers she is the daughter of famous French composer Pierre Vallon and she plays for him, he is utterly smitten. But after he suffers a near-fatal injury and Zoia and her father are...