The Enemy And Miss Innes

All that stands between him and freedom? Turning her hatred to love. Elizabeth Innes has a tongue too sharp for her own good, and she is never more ready to employ it than when faced with the MacKinnons. With just one piece of evidence connecting their clan to a near-deadly attack, she is determined to prove the laird guilty and see him brought to justice. So, when chance throws her in the company of one of the MacKinnon men, she resolves to take advantage of the opportunity to glean more information. Malcolm MacKinnon has long lived under the thumb of his cousin and laird, Angus, who keeps a secret with the power to ruin him. With his mother and siblings entirely dependent upon Angus's capricious generosity, he cannot afford to offend his cousin. When Angus proposes a way for him to finally be free of his shackles, Malcolm is more than ready to oblige. All he must do is help Angus seek revenge upon the rival, neighboring clan. The way to do it? Gain the trust-and love-of one of their young women. As Malcolm and Elizabeth pursue their goals, they find their tasks much more difficult than anticipated, with challenges to their loyalties at every turn. Both must decide how far they are willing to go for revenge-and love.

**Previously published as A Foolish Heart. Redeeming Miss Marcotte is a sweet Regency retelling of Shakespeare's timeless classic A Midsummer Night's Dream. She wants him back. He'll have anyone but her. Mercy Marcotte doesn't deserve a second chance at love. At least, that's what she's believed since jilting Solomon Kennett, the man she loved, when his fortunes took a turn for the worse. But Solomon is back from the West Indies, rich, aloof, and about to offer for Mercy's best friend. Mercy resolves to stay out of it—until her friend runs off with another man. She can't stand by while Solomon is humiliated yet again. Whatever the past, Solomon Kennett is taking control of the future. He is certain he will get what he wants now that he has proven himself worthy of consideration by even the most fastidious of fathers. When the woman he is supposed to propose to is kidnapped by another man, he feels honor-bound to go after them—only to be followed by Mercy, the woman who spurned him years ago. With end goals, loyalties, and history at odds for all involved, nothing is as it seems. The last thing anyone needs is a love potion to further entangle things. Skeptical in the highest degree and determined not to surrender control to his heart, Solomon finds himself wondering if there isn't perhaps something to the potion after all.

When Isabel Cosgrove is informed by her father that he lost her hand in marriage while playing cards with Charles Galbraith—the gentleman she’s been admiring from a distance for years—she is filled with dismay. How can she agree to wed a man whose reason for marriage is part-revenge, part-indifference? Intent on avoiding a painful union where her regard cannot be returned, she concocts a plan. Charles Galbraith didn’t intend to become engaged as a result of a drunken wager at cards, but after the woman he loves spurns him, what does it matter whom he marries? But even Miss Cosgrove, the fiancée he won by wager, seems intent not to marry him—a fact that both relieves and piques him. She instead suggests a plan that has the potential to temporarily appease her father’s demand of marriage while also winning back the love of the woman Charles truly wants. But when Charles and Isabel are thrown into the midst of a brewing scandal and another man’s potential disinheritance, their plan begins to unravel thread by thread, challenging what Galbraith thinks he wants—and just how much more time with him Isabel’s heart can stand.

A babe in a manger once saved the world. Can this one save a failing marriage? Lydia Blakeburn, Baroness Lynham, wants nothing more than to present her husband with an heir, but after five years of marriage, she has all but given up on doing so. What started as a love match has since begun to sour, yet there is nothing Lydia can do to free Miles from a marriage she is certain he regrets. The future they had envisioned together is slipping farther and farther away. Miles Blakeburn is at his wit's end. Not only has he failed to produce an heir to the family's ancient title, his wife has withdrawn from him entirely. The one thing in the world she wants, he has thus far been unable to give her: a child. He is a failure in every regard. When they happen upon an abandoned baby at the Frost Fair, Miles simply can't resist the light he sees sparked in his wife's eyes as she holds the child. He agrees to take the foundling in until Christmastide is over, when they will find the babe a permanent home. But, for a couple who's been yearning for a baby for years, the infant can't help but expose all the feelings Lydia and Miles have long been trying to bury, feelings that have the power to bring them back together—or estrange them forever.

Kate Matcham needs a fortune or a husband. She wants neither. With a tainted inheritance in the balance, she receives one offer to become a scoundrel's mistress and another offer of a marriage of convenience. Before resigning herself to a choice, she accepts the invitation to visit a childhood friend, considering it a last hurrah before embarking on a bleak future. The visit goes sideways when she falls for the gentleman her friend intends to marry, a man well out of Kate's league--and one who seems to be hiding something. Smuggling has overtaken the county, and it seems that everyone is complicit in the trade that killed her father. One by one, her options dwindle as she struggles against her strengthening feelings for a duplicitous man, a determination not to hurt her friend, and keeping the promise she made long ago: to stand up to the people who killed her father.

Fresh from the humiliating annulment of the love match she always wanted, Lady Anne Vincent meekly agrees to the marriage of convenience her father has arranged. She feels hopeful that this marriage can be one of cordial indifference, protecting her from the hurt she knows so well. Tobias Cosgrove isn’t meant for marriage, free spirit that he is. And yet, as the only son, marry he must. He is thus relieved when his father reveals his future wife to be the calm, collected Lady Anne Vincent, for he is confident she won’t plague him with neediness or hysterics like so many of the other young women in society. But when Lady Anne's past reappears on their doorstep, she and Tobias are forced to confront whether a marriage of convenience is the type of marriage they wish for after all.

Emma Caldwell doesn’t hate anyone—except for Hugh Warrilow, the man who jilted her older sister and left like a coward to join the army. Men are clearly not to be trusted, and Emma is determined not to give her heart to one. No, a marriage of convenience is the very thing to suit her. Hugh Warrilow has been secretly in love with Emma Caldwell for years, so when the time comes to live up to both families’ expectations and marry her sister, he can’t find it in himself to do it. Disgraced and misunderstood, he joins to fight Napoleon on the Continent, hoping he will forget Emma and be forgotten by everyone he has disappointed. An injury brings Hugh home—just in time for Christmas and the snowstorm that leaves him trapped under the same roof as Emma. How will he explain that his unforgivable act was motivated by how desperately he loved her? Her icy reception doesn’t leave him the chance, nor does it offer much hope for the season’s expectation of peace on earth and goodwill to men.

**Previously published as True of Heart Love lessons have never gone so awry Miss Ruth Hawthorn helps support her fatherless family the only way she can: doling out love advice in a local newspaper column under an assumed name, The Swan. When she receives a lucrative request for an in-person consultation from someone signed "O," her brother persuades her to go to London with him, teaching him what he needs to know in order to survive the short appointment. But when "O" moves up the time of the rendez-vous and Ruth's brother is nowhere to be found, she is forced to take matters into her own hands. Philip Trent, Lord Oxley, knows precisely which woman will best fill his late mother's shoes as the viscountess—now all he needs is a little help winning her over, swarmed as she is by suitors. Ashamed of his ineptitude with women but determined to succeed, Philip secretly enlists help. The youthful, bespectacled Swan seems like the last person capable of providing such help, but Philip finds in the young man both a friend and a confidant, with a surprising understanding of love. Philip's choice of woman is proving more difficult than anticipated, though, and Ruth's ongoing disguise and frequent meetings with him are taxing her conscience—and her heart. With more secrets than Ruth can manage and a heart long since lost to her most important client, she faces the threat of discovery and ruin—a prospect somehow eclipsed by the heartbreak she will face when those secrets are inevitably discovered by the man she loves.