Everyone in bon ton knew that Lord Hubert Challenge had married country mouse Mary Tyre for her dowry, but no one had yet guessed that Mary had actually fallen in love with her husband!
The grim guardian; for the lovely and young Miss Patricia Patterson, life seemed a delightful dream until the spectre of her guardian, Lord Charles Gaunt, cast a dark shadow over her carefree days of idleness and evenings of dazzling balls and delicious flirtations.
Miss Honeyford was sour on romance, but she had been duly dispatched to London to save the family fortune by hunting for (and securing) a wealthy husband - and thereby proving her role as a loving if not entirely dutiful daughter.
Tongues were set wagging when Elizabeth Markham's glamorous young parents were killed, leaving their only child to the unspeakable class of poor relation.
A woman of independent means with a healthy dose of cynicism about the male persuasion, Harriet Tremayne is content with her circle of spinster friends and their devotion to literature, women's rights, and intellectual interests.
Arranging a season for an unruly young lady whose habit was to enter drawing rooms by sliding down banisters presented a challenge at best - especially since the hoydenish Mira had a sister of incomparable grace and beauty.
The handsome but arrogant Lord Charles Hawksborough desperately wanted to catch the infernally insolent thief who had held him up at pistol point on the King?
When young widow Lady Lovelace realized she had been swindled to near-bankruptcy by her curmudgeonly cousin, she knew she would have to marry again for money.
Alice Lovesey was a poorly mistreated scullery maid whose desperate plea for help miraculously summoned Wadham Hall's rakish eighth duke - summoned him from the dead!