Henrietta Hawksley walks hesitantly to the cliff edge, staring down into the pitch dark cold sea and it's crashing waves...could this be the answer to her predicament, a long leap off the edge into the murkiness below? Left pregnant by the scandalous Lord John Pembury, her character and good name and more importantly that of her fathers the Rev. Robert Hawksley soon to be in disrepair...this appeared to be Henrietta's only escape, until she falls into the arms of The Duke of Templeton - William Pembury. Will Henrietta's life change for the better and be saved from scandal, will she finish that deliberate walk to the cliff edge...or does she favour a different path? Find out what happens in this delightful clean regency romance read, that gives you the real comfort and warmth of an exquisite candlelit feast....
At six o'clock on a May evening, at an uptown corner of Broadway, in New York City, the bowels of the earth opened and disgorged a crowd of weary-faced men and women who scattered in all directions. They were the employees of a huge "dry-goods store," leaving work for the day. It was a stringent rule of the firm that everyone drawing wages, from the smart managers of departments and well-dressed salesladies down to the counting-house drudges and check-boys, should descend into the basement, and there file past the timekeeper and a private detective before passing up a narrow staircase, and so out by a sort of stage-door into the side street. The great plate-glass portals on the main thoroughfare were not for the working bees of this hive of industry-only for the gay butterflies of fashion by whom they lived. The last to come out was a young man dressed in a threadbare suit of tweeds, that somehow hardly seemed American, either in cut or fabric. There might have been a far-away reminiscence of Perthshire moors clinging to them, or earlier memories of a famous creator in Bond Street; but suggestion of the reach-me-down shops from which New York clerks clothe themselves there was none. A flush of anger was fading on their owner's face as he came out into the sunlight, leaving a mild annoyance that presently gave place to a grin.
The author, who is merely an inventor of stories, may at little cost impress his readers with the scope of his general knowledge. For he may place the scene of his story in Milan at the Court of the Visconti and throw back the action half a thousand years, drawing across his stage splendid figures slimly silked or sombrely satined, and fill their mouths with such awesome oaths as "By Bacchus " or "Sapristi " and the like. He may also, does the fine fancy seize him, take for his villain no less a personage than Monseigneur, for hero a Florentine Count, as bright lady of the piece, a swooning flower of the Renaissance, all pink and white, with a bodice of plum velvet cut square at the breast, and showing the milk-white purity of her strong young throat. It is indeed a more difficult matter when one is less of an inventor, than a painstaking recorder of facts. When our characters are conventionally attired in trousers of the latest fashion, and ransacking mythology, the oath-makers can accept no god worthier of witness than High Jove. Greatest of all disabilities consider this fact: that the scene must be laid in Brockley, S.E.
Rain comes to that land but seldom in the summer days; in winter the wind sweeps the snow into rocky ca ons; buttes, with tops leveled by the drift of the old, earth-making days, break the weary repetition of hill beyond hill. But to people who dwell in a land a long time and go about the business of getting a living out of what it has to offer, its wonders are no longer notable, its hardships no longer peculiar. So it was with the people who lived in the Bad Lands at the time that we come among them on the vehicle of this tale. To them it was only an ordinary country of toil and disappointment, or of opportunity and profit, according to their station and success. To Jeremiah Lambert it seemed the land of hopelessness, the last boundary of utter defeat as he labored over the uneven road at the end of a blistering summer day, trundling his bicycle at his side. There was a suit-case strapped to the handlebar of the bicycle, and in that receptacle were the wares which this guileless peddler had come into that land to sell. He had set out from Omaha full of enthusiasm and youthful vigor, incited to the utmost degree of vending fervor by the representations of the general agent for the little instrument which had been the stepping-stone to greater things for many an ambitious young man.
An unmarried Duke, a humble talented girl, a chance meeting, a sweet temptation... Joshua Goodrich, the Duke of Falmouth has been in the habit of meeting prospective brides at Mrs. Fairway's coffee house in London. This coffee house is a very high class affair and she is well known and liked for the delicious range of cakes and patisseries. These creations are primarily made by her daughter, Bridget, but with Lent approaching the two women look set to endure lean times. Still, the duke insists on coming by with his latest prospective bride Lady Primrose. However, with the coffee house mostly empty he finds himself for the first time truly noticing Mrs. Fairway's daughter. Will he abandon looking for the right kind of girl of his class and station, or will he indulge in the sweet girl who makes the finest pastries in London?
The start of a new Regency series features a woman looking to recover a stolen painting accidentally kidnaps a duke instead.Chloe Wynchester is completely forgettable -- a curse that gives her the ability to blend into any crowd. When the only father she's ever known makes a dying wish for his adopted family of orphans to recover a missing painting, she is the first one whom her siblings turn to for stealing it back. No one expects that in doing so, she will also abduct a handsome duke.Lawrence Gosling, the Duke of Faircliffe, is tortured by his father's mistakes. To repair his estate's ruined reputation, he must wed a highborn heiress. Yet when he finds himself in a carriage being driven hell-for-leather down the cobblestone streets of London by a beautiful woman who refuses to heed his commands, he fears his heart is hers. But how can he sacrifice his family's legacy to follow true love?
