Pride of Arms (Men of the Squadron Book seven)

12 Days of Christmas, 4 well-intentioned matchmakers, & a chorus of ghostly cats

Widowed headmistress Grace Phippen seeks a mature husband for her niece Lucy to tone down the young woman’s obsession with volatile science experiments.

Lucy can’t stop concocting dangerous chemistry in her tiny closet laboratory, but she’ll do whatever it takes to help her aunt keep their London young ladies’ academy afloat.

Cupid’s arrow may run afoul of an excess of mistletoe, but true love strikes wherever it may…

An earl mourns the woman who walked away on the arm of his best friend and forsakes his gambling hell to come home and rebuild his family estate.

A broken Royal Engineer struggles to regain his hearing, and his wits, after a career of blowing things up and vows to do whatever it takes to repay the earl for his kindness.

Generations of lively (or not) 6-toed ship’s cats round out the cast.

Will it take a Christmas miracle to convince these two couples where their hearts actually lie?

Will these lonely, misguided matchmakers find their true loves beneath the mistletoe before the clock strikes midnight at the Twelfth Night Ball?

Dominating the Duke (Sex, Lies, & Forbidden Desires Book 6)

Captain El Goodrum has many secrets, but this one could destroy her

Perseus Whitcombe, Duke of Chelmsford, has never married and is hell bent on molding his younger brother into a suitable heir. The only woman he ever loved disappeared suddenly from his life, and for all he knows, she’s probably dead, lost at sea long ago. But he refuses to look back.

Captain Eleanor Goodrum can’t stop looking back. She remembers each excruciating detail of her life as the thirteen-year-old daughter of a tavern keeper in a small village near Bath. Her life since then has taken on mythic proportions as the infamous Captain El Goodrum, smuggler extraordinaire, spy, and owner of the most notorious club of pleasure in London.

The arrogant Duke of Chelmsford meets his match in a dangerous woman from his past

Whitcombe was not the heir to a dukedom back then. He and his father, a minor baron, hatched a bold plan to rescue young Eleanor from her drunken gambler father and send her safely to the home of friends in America. A plan which went horribly wrong when her ship was taken by a French privateer.

What will happen when these two confront the ghosts from their connected pasts? Will Whitcombe be able to loosen up and become more tolerant of the woman El’s become? Will El be able to meet the man she’s always secretly loved on a middle ground where each of them must give up something?

Will these two strong, stubborn people sacrifice who they are today to reclaim the love of the ghosts of who they were years ago?

Tutoring the Bookseller (Sex, Lies, & Forbidden Desires Book 5)

Bookish Lord Whitcombe makes a bold request of 'The Insatiable Lady'

Lord Daedalus Whitcombe, owner of the most wicked bookshop in London, has been named a scandal and a disgrace by most of good society. A title he revels in as it sells more books and annoys the very devil out of his haughty brother, the duke. His brother's efforts to close the bookshop become secondary to Lord Whitcombe's fascination with the shop's new, in-demand book, A Feast of Fantasies, by The Insatiable Lady. His quest to discover the author's identity becomes an obsession, for he has a singular request to make of the lady.

Miss Perriton never expected a bookseller to look like Lord Whitcombe

Miss Cordelia Perriton, the very pattern-card of a genteel young lady, has a reputation for her charitable works. Her endeavors on behalf of the fallen women of Seven Dials are lauded, though a bit daring for an unmarried woman of good family. If only society knew she's The Insatiable Lady, and those fallen women are providing the erotic tales in her sensational book. She means to use the sales to gain financial independence and to establish a home for women who wish to retire from the streets of Seven Dials.

When Lord Whitcombe demands Cordelia submit her next book in person, her irritation moves to fury. The man she'd pictured as an elderly bookish type is instead a sensuously handsome lord. The connection between them is immediate and incendiary when he shocks and intrigues her with a bold request. Her response stuns him to his core.

But when Cordelia's Seven Dials friends begin to disappear, the couple's erotic adventure turns deadly. Are they ready to abandon their dreams to save wheat they have or will their nightmares part them forever?

Claiming the Chess Mistress (Sex, Lies, & Forbidden Desires Book 4)

The loss of Col’s damning journal pages is about to turn deadly;
The forfeit of Charlotte’s closely guarded secrets might destroy her;
Will their mutual quest for justice bring them together, or tear them apart?

By night, she’s a masked chess mistress who challenges and trounces all takers; by day, she’s the ethereal white-blonde beauty who volunteers at the children’s refuge in Seven Dials — Charlotte Smythe lives a luxurious double life of ease as the mysterious chess genius at Goodrum’s House of Pleasure..

After spending years as a gifted investigator extricating others from their peccadillos, dedicated Bow Street runner Archer Colwyn has landed in a suds of his own making. The light-hearted journal of sensual exploits he and his school chums kept while students at Cambridge has gone missing, and the secrets within his particular pages, if revealed, could set off deadly consequences.

The dangerous Captain El Goodrum, proprietress of the most infamous house of pleasure in London, holds the key to their retrieval. In exchange for her cooperation, she demands he run a gauntlet of secrets to deliver a master criminal to justice. His only path to the damning pages is the inscrutable chess mistress who not only resents his attempts to romance away his journal pages, but seems to relish his dread and panic at the prospect of the pages becoming public knowledge.

Charlotte craves the kind of refuge she provides to the orphans she rescues from London’s stews. The respite she seeks away from the world in her St. John’s Wood villa with her two house companions is all that keeps her sane, but sometimes, late at night, she needs something more, something even she cannot name.

Savoring the Chef (Sex, Lies, & Forbidden Desires Book 3)

Will secrets destroy them or ignite the love of a lifetime?

Lionel Carrington-Bowles, wealthy gentleman with a reputation for scandalous behavior and even more scandalous friends, is on every ton hostess’s invitation list. He is devilishly handsome, delightfully charming, and the sort of man who dances with all of the ladies, even the wallflowers. When the journal in which he and his friends have entered their erotic exploits since their days at Cambridge disappears, he has far more reason than his three friends to track down his pages and destroy them. Should Society discover his preference in bed partners his life would move from scandalous to dangerous. When he discovers a cook at one of London’s most exclusive private clubs has his pages, he is determined to do whatever he must to retrieve them.

Nathaniel Charpentier arrived in London at sixteen with a bit of money, a small dog, a letter of recommendation, and some quite unique kitchen skills. Ten years later he is the chef de cuisine for Club Ambrosios, one of London’s most exclusive private clubs. His talents have made the club a huge success and has secured his future for the first time in his life. He derives his latest inspiration from the purchase of an erotic journal from London’s leading pornographer. His own amorous adventures, however, have taken a sinister turn with the arrival of a series of threatening notes. He fears his past has come to London to find him.

The spark between Lionel and Nathaniel is a roaring fire from the moment they meet and gives both good reason to keep their secrets for fear of ending the consuming passion between them. Once revealed, their secrets may destroy them or may be the very reason to take a chance on the love of a lifetime.

Submitting to the Widow (Sex, Lies, & Forbidden Desires Book 2)

Now that both her domineering father and husband are gone, Lady Jane Trevellyn is determined to live for herself. As a wealthy widow, she can have anything she wants. What she wants is the Barrister Stephen Forsythe who wrote a journal of sexual exploits she's been sent from the erotic library at Goodrum's House of Pleasure in London. She's read the pages beginning to end - twice.

They've never been formally introduced, but she did attend one of his cricket matches with her face covered in a widow's veil. And she'll never forget the look of the man's incomparable, muscular ass when he followed through on a cover drive.

Barrister Stephen Forsythe has no idea the garden of delights he's stumbled into when he arrives at the Trevellyn manor in search of the missing journal pages he wishes he'd never put to pen...and never wants anyone else to see again.

He can't believe how easy the sensual widow has made his quest. She'll happily turn over the pages...once he fulfills her fantasy of being ravished amongst the exotic flora in her conservatory. How difficult can that be?

Is Jane brave enough to ask for her every sensual desire?
Can stuffy barrister Stephen afford to let go and drown in a sea of sensual delights?
Will one week of passion be enough?

Dallying with the Diamond (Sex, Lies, & Forbidden Desires Book 1)

Leonidas Croft Atherton, former cavalry officer turned society artist, has ferocious carnal appetites and little use for the Society that shunned him after his father, on his deathbed, pronounced him another man's son. His revenge on those high-in-the-instep members of the ton involves painting lascivious portraits of peers' mistresses and doing even more scandalous things with their wives.

When the shared journal in which he and his friends have recorded their sexual exploits goes missing, Leo will stop at nothing to prevent revealing the identities of their paramours. In his experience, angry husbands tend to shoot first, and ask questions as they reload.

Lady Honoria Eveleigh has been deemed the Season's Incomparable and is
all but engaged to the ton's most sought-after bachelor. Her almost
betrothed is heir to the wealthiest dukedom in England, next to her
father's, that is. He's handsome, kind, witty, but too terrified to even
try to kiss her. She started her secret collection of naughty books out
of curiosity. Now she fears reading about erotic desires that match her
own is all she may ever do.

Discovering pages from their journal have been sold to a duke's daughter
is bad enough, but now Leo must venture back into the Society that
abandoned him. Worse, said duke’s daughter, Lady Honoria, blackmails him for the pages' return and tempts him to meet her licentious demands.
When a man who looks like sin incarnate is desperate for her help,
Honoria cannot resist the desire to see if what she's read about him is
true. No harm in a lady indulging her curiosity just once, is there?

A Wallflower Takes a Duke by Candlelight (Men of the Squadron novella) (Christmas Wallflowers Book 4)

Raised like a country mouse on the vast Montcliffe Abbey estate, Lady Wilhelmina Rumsford had never set foot in London until her father, Viscount Rumsford, decided she simply had to have a Season. It matters little to him that everyone in the ton knows his beloved daughter is the natural child of his footman. Left-handed Mina doesn’t know for certain the kindly footman who taught her how to lace up her boots is her real father. She can’t admit a truth that would hurt that much. And besides, she has her hands full with the Duke of Montfort’s attempts to keep her “out of trouble.”

Julian Jameson, Duke of Montfort, grew up best of friends with Mina's older brothers. They went to school together, caroused together, and tried to keep Mina out of trouble. That is, Julian tried to keep Mina out of trouble. A difficult task once she went to London where he had to make her understand which suitors to welcome and which ones to push away. Unfortunately, his list of "no's" far outweighed the "yes's," so she rejected all the marriage offers that came her way during her first and only Season.

Despite Julian's best laid plans, his rakish friend, the Earl of Westfalia, becomes infatuated with Mina during a fateful snowbound sojourn at a country inn on their way to a Christmas House Party. Julian must keep her away from this most definite of “no’s”. The handsome earl’s attentions make Mina long for a love that sees beyond the circumstances of her parentage. However, she finally has to admit the real reason she rejected all those marriage offers. Her own heart was waiting for the offer she hoped would come, but never did.

Now, it’s up to the guardian angels below stairs to make certain Mina gets her happily ever after...

Pride of Spirit (Men of the Squadron book six)

Will two stubborn Highlanders ignore what their senses already know?

Will he sense the love in front of him despite the loss of his sight?

Will she overcome her wariness of men to embrace the man he’s become?

1st Lieutenant Simon Demarest, late of the Royal Navy, is no longer the man he used to be. The man he used to be led boarding parties with little more than an ax and a blood-curdling cry sure to stop a slaver's crew in their tracks. The man he used to be could dance all night with the prettiest girl in the room.

The man he is now cannot even read a book for himself. Instead, he must sit like an invalid - well, he is an invalid - and listen while some dried-up spinster reads to him. Still, there's something odd about the spinster - her scent. Her aura lingers long after the times she reads to him. And Miss MacKenzie's scent is one he used to know so well, that of a warm, aroused woman. He can barely make sense of her words for her overwhelming essence. She gives off the pheromones of someone who's slept all night cradled in nothing more than a field of lavender...whilst pleasuring herself.

Aileen MacKenzie has had quite enough of men, thank you very much, from her father who decided she should assume her dead mother's duties as chatelaine, cook, housekeeper and everything else in his cavernous, drafty manse out on the moor near Inverness, to her dratted, interfering eight brothers.

She’s her own woman now, owner of the subscription library in the heart of Inverness, thanks to an elderly aunt's bequest. She really doesn't need the money Dr. MacCloud offers her to read to his blind patient. But there’s something about this stubborn invalid, something she can't resist. And what kind of Christian woman would she be to turn her back on a fellow Highlander in need?

The Valentine Skates (Men of the Squadron)

Will Lady Lilianne Howick
Be able to enjoy freedom
Along the banks of the River Wey
Despite society’s prison of duty?

And...
Will a tattered Teddy bear and
A moonlight Valentine’s skate
Be enough to turn friends into lovers?

It's 1820, and Lady Lilianne Howick hides away from the judgment of the ton on her family's country estate in Surrey. She escaped the Dey's harem four years earlier and was rescued after Lord Admiral Exmouth's bombardment of Algiers. Although the gossip sheets speculated about her supposed lurid experiences, no one outside her family knows the truth.

The man she once loved, her neighbor, Squire Frederick Meredith, doesn’t care. He’s endured heartache of his own and has tried for years to break through her self-imposed exile. Will one small girl and a tattered stuffed bear be enough to create the magic necessary to bring these two back together?

Pride of a Warrior (Men of the Squadron book five)

A Diamond of London's Glittering Ballrooms
Must Travel to the Ends of the Earth to Find Love...

It's 1825, and Lady Lydia Howick has accepted that the love of her life, Royal Marine Captain George Neville, has been killed in action with the Men of the Squadron in fierce fighting on West African Sherbro Island. She's moved on with her life until one day while at a Royal Academy exhibition of art from the Holy Land, she sees her supposedly dead lover in a group of figures painted in a desert caravan scene.

She can't rest until she's sure he's not suffering as a slave in the Middle East.

George Neville no longer considers himself worthy of the title of Royal Marine ever since being taken captive during an action against slavers. Once his captors realized his strength and abilities in battle, they forced him to be one of them, promising his eventual freedom if he helped enslave others. They held the threat of punishment of child slaves over his head if he did not obey orders.

After four horrific years in the slave trade, he's certain he's unworthy of anyone's love, let alone that of Lady Lydia. He refuses to sully her with the weight of his sins.

How can she forgive him? More importantly, how can he forgive himself?

Pride of Justice (Men of the Squadron book four)

Miss Rachel Berry, the adopted daughter of Freetown missionaries, wants to re-connect with her African mother’s family. She does not trust the Royal Navy, or Captain Hotham of the African Squadron. Her lying English father was a former naval seaman who jumped ship to join the lucrative African slave trade.

Capt. Christopher Hotham, 3rd son of a baron, transports a group of slaves he rescued to the missionary school in Freetown before attending the prize court to see if the judge will rule in favor of him and his crew so they can get on with the work of patrolling for slavers. The last thing he needs is to get involved with a beautiful mission teacher who seems hell-bent on putting herself in harm’s way with the illegal slave traders swarming at the fringes of Freetown.

Can they escape the destiny Society assigns them, or will they create their own?

The Duke’s List (Men of the Squadron novella)

He suspects his duchess is not an innocent...
She wishes her duke were a little more worldly
The former Jane Lemon’s overnight transformation into a duchess, thanks to her father’s deathbed maneuverings, has been something of a shock. She’s spent most of her life in London, where her mother’s free-spirited salons brought her into contact with a world of discreet, privileged sensuality. Now she has to deal with a stuffy duke who accuses her of being a tarnished woman. He wants a duchess who will make love in the dark of night, without any imaginative embellishments, for the sole purpose of producing an heir. If only he were willing to bend a little her way…

Cornelius, Duke of Sidmouth, has his limits. He assumed his arranged marriage to a Cornwall heiress would go as smoothly as his well-run estate, Bocollyn. A man expects decorum and modesty in his bride, not unbridled sensuality and wantonness. He can’t believe she left him on their honeymoon. When he returns home, she’s already there, in charge of his stables and living in his retired groomsman’s cottage. Now he has to start all over and woo his duchess.

Will she give him a second chance? Will he be able to suspend his pride a little to give her what she needs?

Pride of Valor (Men of the Squadron book three)

Valor in battle is nothing compared to the courage required to face up to love.

Lady Harriet, widowed Marchioness of Blandford, rusticates in the countryside outside Falmouth with her grandmother, a former beauty and Covent Garden actress. Although the elderly duchess’s days as the toast of society ended with marriage to the late Duke of Sidmouth, her aged mind has turned back to her earlier calling. Two mastiffs and Harriet’s naughty eight-year-old son complete the havey-cavey household.

Whilst combing Falmouth’s harbor-front bars for crew for the Black Condor, Royal Marine Lieutenant Richard Bourne has to rescue an elderly lady from drunken hecklers whilst she’s playing the witches’ scene from “Macbeth.” Seeing her safely home turns out to be complicated. Who knew she was a former duchess? Who knew her granddaughter would have deep green eyes a man could drown in?

How can Harriet rusticate with an Irishman underfoot who looks that good in a Royal Marine uniform? How can Richard walk away after one good deed without falling into her deep green eyes?

Pride of Duty (Men of the Squadron book two)

Willa Morton leads a life fraught with secrets. She’s lived the last ten years of her life as “Wills,” physician’s assistant to her Royal Navy surgeon father. Their subterfuge works well until he collapses and dies from a heart attack. Her days as a woman living free as a man are numbered.
When his father’s political clout lands him on a ship of the line, Dr. Cullen MacCloud resents his latest posting, away from his friends on the African Squadron and the dangerous work they do. Will, the deceased surgeon’s son, is a sullen sprout, but Cullen’s stuck with him. Since the posting is temporary, what could go wrong?
What if these two have more in common than they think? Will a thin blanket hung across the middle of a tiny cabin be enough to protect against the desire smoldering between them?

Pride of Honor (Men of the Squadron book one)

What if two people determined to marry anyone but each other end up falling in love?

A hatpin-wielding, parasol-armed poet with a maddening Royal Navy officer in tow races against time to attract the marital attentions of the perfect “gentleman of the ton.”

Sophia Brancellli, the orphaned, illegitimate child of a duke’s daughter and an Italian poet, is on a mission. She must ensure her marriage to a “suitable gentleman of the ton” before her twenty-first birthday or she’ll be destitute, per the terms of her ducal grandmother’s will. Close to having her own poems published, Sophia has her hopes dashed each time by someone revealing her secrets. That same someone so desperately wants her to fail the terms of the will, they’re willing to commit violent acts to ruin her reputation.

Captain Arnaud Bellingham has ascended the ranks of the Royal Navy in spite of his half-French heritage by proving himself at the Battle of Algiers and with the West African Squadron. He seeks a simple marriage of convenience to a mature woman, a widow who has been his sometime mistress the last several years. The very thing he does not want, an exotic Italian innocent, literally falls into his life when he rescues her from kidnappers, although she disputes she needed saving. And now, honor and duty dictate he has to waste the rest of his leave guarding her through the mad whirl of the Season.

Horizons

"Horizons" contains two novella sequels to the full-length novels, "Fortune's Horizon" and "Secret Harbor." In "Horizons East," it's 1868, and Captain Jack Roberts has moved on to serve as a commander in the Turkish Navy. But now he's gone missing, and Lillie has dragooned his younger brother, Miles, into guarding their son and nanny while she searches for Jack among the Turkish islands. On leave from military service in India, Miles gets claustrophobic at the thought of going undercover with the precocious three-year-old and the boy's way-too-beautiful nanny who loathes him.

“Rhum Bay” continues the adventures of the Blanchards from “Secret Harbor” and is set about nineteen years later, in 1778. Jean and Marie’s daughter Honore is now a handful, prone to fits of temper, so they’ve put her to work in the family business. When she runs afoul of a dark, brooding young man with designs on their shipping business, she discovers he is Alexandre, the illegitimate son of Antoine Courbet, murderer and despoiler of women, who nearly ripped the Blanchard family apart. Raised by his grandfather, another force in shipping on Martinique, Alex is determined to succeed in spite of his dark background. Honore’s answer to his meddling proves she is indeed her father’s daughter. But is Alex his father’s son?