The Thief's Countess

English knight Sir Adam Dayne is offered the ultimate prize by the earl who raised him: lordship of Langford castle. All he must do is accept a betrothal to the Scottish Marcher warden's beautiful daughter, a match made to keep peace at the tumultuous Anglo-Scottish border. Sir Adam relishes the prospect - until he meets the woman he is to wed. Lady Cora Maxwell hates everything English, including the self-assured new lord who has claimed her hand in marriage. When Adam proposes a unique challenge, Cora is forced to face her greatest fears.

Dashing French pirate Jean-Philippe Beauvisage revels in a life of complete freedom...until the night at a ball in Georgian London, when a Russian beauty quietly steals his heart. Heartbroken Antonia Varyshkova, who has lost her parents and her home in a St. Petersburg fire, stops in London en route to a new life with her brother in America. When her arrogant ship's captain, Tobias Ormond, insists that she attend a ball with him, Antonia reluctantly agrees.

His heart torn in two, Graham Astor, Duke of Kensington, mourns his wife. As he distances himself from everything that reminds him of happier days lost forever, he comes to realize that there is one thing he cannot run from. Graham needs a new wife, if only for the sake of his daughter. Disillusioned with love, Rosabel only wishes to not remain a burden to her uncle's family much longer. After seeing her parents' love turn against them, Rosabel dreams of an independent life as a governess. But then a stranger asks for her hand in marriage.

Three innocent debutantes must work to solve the mysterious death of their childhood friend. With undaunted determination they pledge to not only expose the man responsible for their friend's tragic death on her wedding night, but to also uncover other unscrupulous men of the ton who would jeopardize the future of other young women.

Clara Becker is a supremely gifted composer - a talent of little to use to a woman in 1830s England. Her compositions only have worth when they are published under her brother's name, yet this deception barely enables them to scrape out a living in the poorest quarter of London. Meets the Master... Darien Reynard, the most celebrated musician in Europe, pursues success with a single-minded intensity.

This collection includes the novellas The Christmas Wish, Home for Christmas, and Christmas at Farley Manor. In The Christmas Wish, Miss Annabelle Pemberton proposes marriage to her father's former ward, the rakish viscount Lord William de Vere, to grant her dying father his last Christmas wish. In Home for Christmas, Captain David St. Vincent has dreamed for six long years of returning home to Ramseyfield - and to its prettiest resident, Elizabeth Balfour.

For decades, signora Francesca Ginori has kept her true identity secret. Living a quiet life now, her children grown with children of their own, she no longer worries about assassins coming in the middle of the night to kill them all. Then one bright, summer afternoon a stranger appears on her doorstep. He knows her secrets and threatens to destroy her world. It is not gold or power he seeks but something far more dangerous; knowledge.

Jules, the Sixth Duke of Dandridge disdains Society and all its trappings, preferring the country's solitude and peace. Already jaded and cynical since the woman he loved died years ago, he's become even more so since unexpectedly inheriting a dukedom's responsibilities and finding himself the target of every husband-hunting vixen in London.

Spinster Miss Eleanor Lockhart is suddenly homeless and employment is her only option. Ruined after succumbing to a scoundrel's excessive charm nearly a decade ago, she's lucky to obtain a position as a paid companion and committed to behaving with the utmost propriety. She definitely shouldn't be in the arms of a man capable of utterly destroying what little remains of her reputation.

Join three bestselling regency romance authors, Heidi Ashworth, Annette Lyon, and Michele Paige Holmes, for three new regency romance novellas in A Midwinter Ball.