Dejected and jobless like so many other Servicemen after the end of the Great War of 1914-18, Tybalt Hampton escapes a ball in Berkeley Square and meets a delightful young girl who has also sought refuge in the little Temple in the nearby gardens because no one has asked her to dance. It is too dark to make out her face, but in an enchanted moment they kiss in the moonlight and a nightingale sings in the trees above as if just for them. Two years later the beautiful Aleta Wayte, the recipient of that anonymous kiss, and her brother, Sir Harry Wayte, are forced to let their beloved ancestral mansion to a millionaire American called Cornelius Wardolf, disguising themselves as servants in their own home and at their tenant's beck and call. Of noble birth but penniless, Aleta still dreams of that handsome stranger. So, when Fate in the form of a road accident brings him injured to her door, her hopes are raised and then instantly dashed. In her guise as a lowly servant how can she...

After her mother had succumbed to pneumonia and followed her husband to the grave, beautiful young Meta Lindley is bereft.Now that her much-loved brother Richard is away in London most of the time, she is alone in the family's once laughter-filled Manor House with only silence and her father's pedigree stable of horses for company.Meta is delighted when Richard pays her a surprise visit, but when he reveals that he and their Diplomat father had worked as undercover Agents, it is Richard who is taken aback to find that Meta and their Mama had known all along!Then, to Meta's amazement, Richard asks her to undertake a vital and very perilous spy mission of her own. A Russian Prince, whom Queen Victoria suspects is a spy, has arrived in England with his young sister, Princess Nathlia, and is looking for a country house where he can hunt and ride superb horses.Richard has offered to rent The Manor House to Prince Alexis for the Season and has offered...

Fleeing her scheming stepmother and a forced marriage, beautiful young heiress Thelma Fernhurst stumbles across a magnificent house like the Fairy Palace of her dreams. More amazing still, in its grounds she finds a circus, complete with lions and tigers and a Big Top – and loses her heart to its dashing owner, the Earl of Merstone! But the runaway's dream turns to a nightmare when Thelma discovers that the Earl has an evil, scheming relative of his own – and unless a trembling Thelma can save him from a ravenous tiger, the Circus of Love will turn to a Circus of Death!

After the death of her beloved mother, the beautiful young Salrina Milborne and her father, Lord Milborne, have found themselves in straitened circumstances.And now that her father has hurt his leg in a riding accident he is unable to complete the training of the horses they depend on for their income. Reluctantly Lord Milborne has agreed to sell one of his most precious thoroughbreds and, against his better judgement, he allows Salrina to ride unaccompanied to complete the sale some distance from their Manor House. When a vicious storm strikes, Salrina takes shelter in the stables of a Posting inn and there she overhears a conversation that will change her life. An English aristocrat is scheming with a sinister Frenchman to assassinate the Prince Regent at one of his extravagant parties at Carlton House in London!In the middle of the War against Napoleon this would have a devastating effect on British morale and would hand a considerable advantage to the French...

When Queen Victoria is called upon to arrange a marriage for the dashing King Alexius of Vultarnia to save him and his country from the predatory Russians, the adventurous and beautiful Pythia takes the place of her cousin, Princess Erina, and heads for the small Balkan country in a British Battleship.Princess Erina has just fallen in love with a good-looking Peruvian and Pythia could not allow her happiness to be torn from her for cold political strategy.On her arrival in Vultarnia she receives a warm reception and she is determined to win the hearts of her new subjects and the heart of their cosmopolitan worldly King. The King is surprised and impressed by his new wife and sees how much he could learn from her. But a Russian plot threatens to throw this popular new marriage into jeopardy and Pythia must think quickly in order to save the King and the beautiful country of Vultarnia.Will King Alexius fall in love with Pythia or remain attached to his glamorous and seductive...

All her young life has been lived in the shadow of her father's disgrace after he was caught cheating at cards at his Club in London and Alita Lang lives a dismal life under sufferance with her begrudging aunt and uncle, the Duke and Duchess of Langstone. In fact the only love in Alita's lonely life is her passion for her uncle's thoroughbred horses, especially her beloved stallion, Flamingo, who she has taught many tricks to. She spends most of her time in the Duke's stables and can train the most unruly horseAnd now the Duke, desperate to raise money, is determined to sell them all to the brash American multi-millionaire who has just bought the neighbouring estate and its magnificent Marshfield House. Introduced to the handsome, blue-eyed and tanned Clint Wilbur as Alita Blair, an employee of the estate, she soon finds herself working for him on improvements to his stables and soon, through his consistent kindness and gentle thoughtfulness, she discovers an alluring new side to...

There is something strangely noble and also delicate about the emaciated young ragamuffin boy that the handsome Hugo, Lord Lynke, finds himself employing as his new page on his undercover mission to Spain on behalf of the King of England. The page he has brought with from England had just been taken ill and so has to return home. The 'boy' is named Venturo. In fact 'he' is Ventura – the lost daughter of a noble and rich Spanish dynasty.Lord Lynke's task is to marry the richest and most beautiful woman in Spain to ensure peace between the two countries which are invariably at war with each other. She is the proud, imperious and dangerous seductress Doña Alcira and this marriage would prove no great challenge for a Nobleman of Lord Lynke's calibre and renown.Except that he faces Don Carlos, a powerful and unscrupulous suitor determined to erase any competition for Doña Alcira's hand. She has a glamorous and dangerous matador as her current lover and employs a besotted and sinister...

Isolated monasteries nestling in the peaks, precipices and giddying gorges of the snow-capped Himalayas... The filth-encrusted and lice-infested hovels of the native people... It's all a far cry from the genteel sophistication she's left behind in Monte Carlo. But as always, Vivian Carrow's as defiant as she's beautiful – and, nursing a broken heart, she's determined to accompany her father on a perilous mission to Tibet. Faced with a haughtily handsome and arrogant Captain whom she suspects is a murdering spy, a lecherous, drug-crazed Indian prince and gangs of murderous monks, that defiance is tested to its limits – indeed almost to the death. Will Vivian plunge to an icy death in a mountain crevasse? Or fall into love with the man she so hated.

For beautiful young Ivana her stepfather Keith Waring is no replacement for her much-missed father, the Honourable Hugo Sherard, who was killed in Spain fighting against Napoleon Bonaparte. Her stepfather is a spendthrift and he has gambled away virtually everything the family owns.Ivana's hatred for her stepfather is doubled when, to her utter horror, she overhears him offering her as a 'kept woman' to the equally despised Lord Hanford for over five thousand pounds!Ivana runs away with her old Nanny acting as her chaperone and companion and applies for work through a Domestic Agency, where she is invited to apply for a post using her flawless Parisian French for the Earl of Lorimer, who is working in the War Office.Expecting a man to apply for the post, the imperious but handsome Earl is at first sceptical, but on realising that he knew her father, he soon warms to her, saying that he has a 'difficult and dangerous mission for her!'Ivana is to become a spy, working undercover...

When Bengal Lancers Major Iain Hadleigh first encounters the beautiful young Brucena Nairn it is on a moving train in India as he forces her back into the carriage to protect her from serious rioting on the platform. Far from being grateful, Brucena is outraged, having no idea that she is contravening Major Hadleigh's own orders that no Europeans may travel to the forbidden area of Saugor.She is on her way to join her cousin, Captain Sleeman and his wife, Amelie, intending without their knowledge to work as a Nanny to their as yet unborn child and thereby escaping a fault-finding father who hates her for her beauty and for not being the boy he so desperately needs for his estate and Castle in ScotlandBut Brucena soon finds far more to fear under India's searing sun. First the unwanted attentions of the somewhat sinister Lord Rawthorne and, worse still, the devotees of Thuggee – highway murderers who strangle their victims from behind with a yellow silk scarf –It is only when,...

Arriving at an employment agency in the West End of London in search for some way to support herself and her beloved old Nanny after her father's gambling debts have left her in penury, the beautiful young Carina is offered a very unusual post in which she must take charge young of a young boy, the son of one, Lady Lynche. On visiting her at her lodgings Carina is dismayed to find that Lady Lynche, an Oriental lady, is at death's door and so is reluctantly persuaded to take her child, Dipa, to his father in the English countryside.Arriving at the vast and imposing Lynche Castle in the depths of Gloucestershire, however, she finds that the child is far from welcome and that Lord Lynche, although more handsome than any other man she has ever seen, is living a dissolute bachelor's life with his disreputable friends, who only want to gamble day and night at cards. As well as the ghosts that apparently linger behind The Castle's imperious walls, the place is haunted by a sense of...

Now that her beloved father has passed away and the family estate has been sold off to provide for her future, the beautiful young Zelina Tiverton is somewhat bewildered to find herself living amid the glamour of London's Social world with her Guardian, her glamorous Aunt Kathleen, who is the husband of the Earl of Rothbury. Now her aunt has a greater shock in store for her, announcing that she is sending Zelina to Russia to stay as Governess with Prince and Princess Volkonsky in their superb Palace to teach their children English. Clearly Aunt Kathleen simply wants Zelina off her hands as she is so pretty and so reluctantly she finds herself alone and unchaperoned aboard a Steamer bound for Stockholm en route to St. Petersburg. On board she meets the seemingly imperial Lord Charnock, one of the most handsome and overwhelming men she had ever seen, but also one of the most aloof. Unknown to Zelina, Lord Charnock is headed for St. Petersburg on an urgent and secret Diplomatic...

Times have been tough for young Lady Canèda Lang and her brother Harry and they neither seek not expect help from the aristocratic French family that ostracised their mother Clémentine de Bantôme in their outrage at her running away to marry their father, Gerald Lang, whom they considered beneath her.Worse still, the couple incurred the wrath of the much older and powerful Duc de Saumac, to whom Clémentine was betrothed and so a bitter vendetta began.Then, overnight, Harry discovers that he is now an Earl! He has unexpectedly inherited the Earldom of Langstone with an ancestral Castle and a large and prosperous estate.Hearing the news, their French grandmother invites them to stay – evidently the de Bantômes have fallen on hard times themselves and now have the nerve to ask for help.Apparently their vines have contracted the deadly phylloxera disease that is ravaging vineyards all over Europe and has badly damaged the family's...

Beautiful eighteen-year-old waif Felicita Galvão is penniless, almost starving and all alone in the world when the Duchesse de Monreuil finds her desperately trying to sell her needlework at The Grand Hotel in Lisbon. Struck by Felicita's deep blue eyes – so different from those of any Portuguese girl she has ever seen – she agrees to buy everything the girl has to sell and offers her a ride to her home in her smart carriage.Something about this young beauty strongly reminds the Duchesse of herself at the same age when she first found the love of her life, Juan, the Marques de Oliveira Vasconles – said by everyone to be 'the most handsome and the most exciting gentleman in the whole of Portugal'. Still deeply bitter over the way that the Marques Juan has abandoned her to marry another 'whose blood is the equal of mine', the Duchesse suddenly sees a way to use this young innocent beauty to wreak the revenge that she has been dreaming of and planning for years. Moving Felicita into...

The demure but beautiful Alecia Stambrook sorely misses her late mother, Lady Sophie. And now that her uncle, the Earl of Langhaven, has also died, there will be no more of the generous stipend that Alecia's father had relied on to survive as the books that he writes bring in very little money..When her much-loved cousin Charis arrives unexpectedly at her home, Alecia is heartened although taken aback by her strange request. Charis asks her to pretend to be her, as they look very much alike, and visit the Guardian she has never met at the English Garrison in Cambrai in France, while she marries the love of her life secretly in London.. The Guardian, General Lord Kiniston, sound old and ill-tempered, but, when Charis offers her five hundred pounds, which is enough to keep her and her father for some years, Alecia nervously agrees to go ahead with the pretence.Arriving in Cambrai, Alecia is amazed to find not only that the imperious and frightening Lord Kiniston is not old at...