Regency Royal
20 total works
Lady Jane Lovelace has conceived the idea of approaching the most notorious man about town, Lord Charles Welbourne, with a most unique proposition.
But when he counters her offer with a condition that he thinks will halt her impudence, much to the surprise of both, she accepts.
A novel of passion and intrigue, The Westerby Inheritance is the first volume of this new and emotionally charged romantic saga all played out against a backdrop of elegant eighteenth century society.
Arranging a season for an unruly young lady whose habit was to enter drawing rooms by sliding down banisters presented a challenge at best - especially since the hoydenish Mira had a sister of incomparable grace and beauty.
Mira wasn't daunted at all by the local society and its ridiculous marriage mart. Her heart belonged to Lord Charles, who had been the object of her dreams ever since she was a child. Alas, Charles had eyes only for her ever-perfect sister, Drusilla.
Along the sidelines, the Marquess of Grantley was enjoying Mira's jealous antics - although pushing her sister into the fountains had practically ruined her social cachet. It was up to him to restore her to respectability and make her an eligible bride once again. Yet when he succeeded, the lovelorn Marquess began to wish he had left well enough alone.
Certainly the two should never have met. The handsome, wealthy Marquess of Rockingham was the most notorious man in London, as infamous for his violent temper as he was for his intemperate ways.
Miss Lucinda Westerville was a country vicar's daughter, as innocent as she was lovely and as proper as a young lady could possibly be.
Yet when this improbably matched pair met at a glittering social ball, they had struck the dubious bargain to become man and wife - in name only! But Lucinda soon found that she had taken on more than she bargained for when she vowed not to love this untamed, infuriatingly attractive man when she tried to rein her own foolishly galloping heart.
A woman of independent means with a healthy dose of cynicism about the male persuasion, Harriet Tremayne is content with her circle of spinster friends and their devotion to literature, women's rights, and intellectual interests.
However, when she determines to undertake a London Season for her beautiful but featherbrained niece, she concedes she must appear less a bluestocking and more fashionable to successfully sponsor this impossible young lady whose only real desire, it seems, is to consume chocolate.
Certainly her modish new appearance has nothing to do with the attentions of Lord Dangerfield, a wicked man of the world who has designs on the fair niece, yet spends an inordinate amount of time trying to sell Harriet on the virtues of his all-too-obvious attributes.
As far as matrimonial prospects were concerned, Lucy Bliss was told she'd make an excellent clergyman's wife.
Her mother, however, had loftier aspirations for her lovely younger sister Belinda. Belinda would marry a duke. More specifically, the Duke of Wardshire. Lucy was truly horrified. Lucifer Wardshire! Why, he was rumored to be as wicked as the devil, with orgies and mistresses' and worse!
As the London Season unfolded, Lucy couldn't decide who was more abominable, her vulgar mama or the arrogant yet disconcertingly handsome duke. No matter, Lucy vowed to go to any lengths to protect her sister, even if her mission should take her into the very arms of the devilish duke himself.
Just when he'd fobbed off the last brat, another appeared to take her place!
Poor Lord Anselm! The dashing bachelor was forever plagued with dying relatives leaving their female children to his care. Indeed, he had squired so many a silly miss from schoolroom to marriage mart that he had sworn off woman altogether.
The current ward was far and away the worst. Cheeky as only a French girl could be, Yvonne de la Falaise had surely sent her papa to an early grave with her melodramatics and mischief. Thank goodness for her governess, Patricia Cottingham, so calm, so competent.
But all was not as it seemed, or so Anselm learned, and very nearly too late.
Lovely Alice Lacey was a true Incomparable, and her marriage to the Duke of Ferrant was the event of the Season. But almost none realized, however, that Alice was secretly in love with someone else - or that she had confided her feelings to a clever talking mynah bird who determined to announce these intimacies at the moment of the couple's wedding!
Now the gossip mongers were relentless. Alice's marriage had started out and remained cold and impersonal, and her new husband was already rumored to be taken with another woman.
Before she even realized what was happening, Alice found herself in world of opposites: she found out that the man she had thought she loved was something other than what he seemed, and the man she had married was something far more than she'd hoped. Her last hope and redemption had to be convincing the man she had wed that they were in love.
When young widow Lady Lovelace realized she had been swindled to near-bankruptcy by her curmudgeonly cousin, she knew she would have to marry again for money.
These were the very thoughts of Lord Philip, who had nothing between him and destitution but his small army pension. And so these two attractive fortune-hunters somehow found each other and before long, popped into marriage - and into the bridal chamber - only to discover they were both virtually penniless.
What a diabolical situation. What would they do now?
Poor Lucy was living a dream. She had married a gambler, a womanizer, and a drunkard. And she refused to admit that his frequent overnight absences were of any significance.
The sting came when it was revealed that Lucy's parents had bought her husband for her. And then one night at a ball, Lucy met the charismatic Duke of Habard and suddenly anything seemed possible.
London was all on edge and astir to have in its midst the exquisite Princess Felicity of Brasnia. What scandal would ensue should society discover that the bejeweled heir to a royal throne was in truth Miss Felicity Channing of Cornwall, fleeing a match she did not want and that had been arranged by her conniving stepfather!
But how long could Felicity carry off this lively masquerade before she would falter? Especially since the dark, raffish eyes of Lord Arthur Bessamy seemed to look right through her disguise - and set her spirited heart to pounding?
The handsome but arrogant Lord Charles Hawksborough desperately wanted to catch the infernally insolent thief who had held him up at pistol point on the King?s Highway and ridden off with his family's inheritance and jewels.
Hawksborough just as desperately tried not to want the piquant and penniless Miss Amanda Colby when this young lady and her twin brother came to stay at his London townhouse at the height of the social season.
Hawksborough feared his own desire for this slip of a girl when he was about to wed the most beautiful and more suitable Lady Mary Dane. Meanwhile, Amanda feared he would discover she was the thief before she could atone for the crime. Whatever was to happen, it was clear that neither was prepared for what was to take place in this bewildering labyrinth of love and larceny.
When Lady Anne Sinclair vowed to marry anyone as long as it meant she married before her spoilt beauty of a sister, she had no idea the 'anyone' would be the Marquess of Torrance. Long the darling of the ton - and considered quite the confirmed bachelor - he succumbed to Annie's charms and, most magically, made her his wife.
But Annie's lifelong battle for attention had ill-prepared her for married life. In a tipsy revery on her wedding night, she blurted out her real reason for marrying the Marquess - and her husband's formidable pride shut the door on any further communication.
Only a crisis of major proportions could bring the headstrong newlyweds together. And no less than the Chancellor of the Exchequer, with sinister political ambitions known only to himself, embroiled Annie in a dangerous plot that taught her the truth about her wifely sentiments.
At age twenty-three, the petite Lady Margery has already graced the rows of wallflowers for many a season. With the one exception of Charles, the Marquess of Edgecombe, the only man who ever dances with her, Lady Margery will have nothing to do with men; what's more, she does not even particularly like Charles.
Bored beyond words, she firmly decides this to be the end of it all and returns to the comfort of her only love, her home at Chelmswood. But she does not find comfort, not even there. It seems her middle-aged father has taken for himself a dim-witted brat of nineteen to be his bride.
Forced into bankruptcy by his child-bride's lust for luxury, Margery's father determines to sell Chelmswood. But Margery will not hear of it and launches an all-out, military-like campaign to ensnare herself a wealthy husband and save her ancestral family home.
Everything seems to be going according to plan until the unforeseen intervention of Charles sabotages Margery's plan, giving them both a run for their money.
Miss Jennie Bemyss was in a position that any intelligent young lady would envy.
The wealthy, worldly Marquis of Charrington proposed a marriage of convenience that would leave him free to pursue his pleasures, and leave Jennie free of his undoubtedly depraved desires.
At the same time, handsome charming Guy Chalmers, whom Jennie had loved since childhood, proposed to aid her in enjoying her freedom to the fullest.
Jennie should have felt relief at being left alone at last by a man whom she should properly despise. She should have felt even happier to be courted by a man whom she had so long adored.
Why, then, did she feel so confused??
Handsome, dashing Henry Wright, the Duke of Westerland, needed a wife in a desperately short period of time. If he could not find a wife, he would lose the legacy he so desperately desired.
Young, lovely but sheltered Miss Frederica Sayers needed a husband just as much as Henry Wright needed a wife, only she needed a husband to save her from the life of shame that almost certainly awaited her when she fled the callous cruelty of her family.
Marriage between the dashing lord and this reckless runaway was clearly the answer for both of them - until the duke discovered he had a duchess he could not tame and the duchess found that she would rather lose her until then spotless reputation than lose him to another beautiful woman who was everything she was not.
The local society could only speculate how a pair of turtledoves would cope as the guests of the scandalous Lady Dacey. Surely she would attempt to corrupt them - an act that both Pamela Perryworth and Honoraria Goodham would see as welcome entertainment in their rigid, joyless lives.
Though Mrs. Perryworth is married - most unhappily - and the young Honoraria has a cloying tendency to read too much scripture, the purity and loveliness of both ladies nonetheless inflames the senses of two notorious lords. Mr. Sean Delaney loses his heart at first sight of the fair Mrs. Perryworth while the disreputable Duke of Ware is quite disturbed by the innocent Honoraria, who unknowingly dares to tempt his jaded heart.
As the youngest of four unmarried vicar's daughters, Frederica feared her destiny was to die of boredom in the sleepy village of Barton Sub Edge. Her looks were deemed unfortunate and her willful manner labeled her difficult. She never dreamt the arrival of a stranger would be a twist to her fate.
But Frederica and the wordily gentleman from the city, Lord Granton had something in common: boredom. So it was that the two formed a secret friendship. Frederica lived vicariously through his many tales of adventure while he found a delightful respite from the simpering females thrown his way.
When had their summer idyll turned so simply to love? When had a country miss become such a breathtaking lady? And what the devil was a certified rogue who was much too old for her going to do about it?
