Showing results by author "Patricia Rice" in All Categories

John Fitzhugh Wyckerly has been the spare heir all his life, supporting himself with gambling and charm. The news that he's inherited the bankrupt title of earl of Danecroft shatters his indolent world. Even penniless, he's always paid his debts, but now the estate's creditors are closing in. He can fake his death and run for cover or accept overwhelming responsibility and find a rich wife - one who will also accept his illegitimate terror of a daughter.

Wycliffe Manor has been neglected for decades. Its new heirs are determined to create a welcoming home. Yet soon after the latest family moves in, bones are uncovered in the orchard . . . and odd strangers arrive. When her curate father returns his family to Gravesyde for the marriages of the manor's heirs, gawky spinster Patience Upton has high expectations—until her father is murdered. Shock at learning her father had a mysterious past leads to alarm that the killer may have been after his notebook, which she now possesses.

Her pious father’s murder leaves Faith Montague orphaned and lost on the dangerous road to London , only to be rescued by a notorious highwayman. Morgan de Lacy, a lawless rake with the bearing of a nobleman, treats her finer than those who should have loved and protected her. Recognizing a fine gem when he sees one, de Lacy sets about seducing his orphaned companion. His caresses incite passion…his fiery kisses tantalize, and Faith is in peril of losing herself to temptation.

Blake Montague's draconian temper and clever mind belong on the Continent, decoding French communications. Instead, as the youngest son of a baron, he's terrorizing London ballrooms in search of a wife who will buy the commission he can't afford. Jocelyn Carrington, after years of smiling through the pain inflicted by an uncaring family, has just inherited a fortune. Now she can buy the special home with an aviary her eccentric younger brother needs - but Blake Montague's family owns it.

Newly appointed priestess to the Temple of Aelynn Tasia Olympus is burdened with the greatest task to face any leader - saving her acolytes from a tsunami and finding them a new home. Her ability to communicate with the goddess cannot tell her how to protect three dozen virgins and an equal number of soldiers and sailors as they flee their doomed island. Experienced captain Nautilus the Navigator can tackle storms and sea, but obeying a Seer who tells him to sail impossible shoals requires too much belief.

Magic is her birthright.... The daughter of one of the strongest magical lineages, Ninian Malcom Siddons is a powerful witch. Determined to use her magic only for good, she lives a simple, solitary life as a healer in her village, where she meets Drogo.

Scarred in a duel over a feckless female, Gavin Lawrence leaves America to take up his new duty as Marquess of Effingham, vowing to never again care for another woman. But lurking in the Marquess' crumbling manor is a young woman in terrible danger. The self-sufficient daughter of a soldier, Dillian Whitnell hides her injured cousin in the secret passages of Arinmede Manor following an attempt on their lives.

The disappearance of the sacred chalice has brought disastrous weather and volcanic eruptions to the island of Aelynn. Ian Olympus, Aelynn's powerful leader, must venture outside the only home he's known to find the cup and save his people. Chantal Deveau has used her gift of music to write impassioned anthems for the Revolution and lullabies for her niece. But as the mobs grow more violent, the sensual timbre of a handsome stranger in a monk's robes calls more seductively than her music.

The mystic Isle of Aelynn slowly gravitates toward the same disastrous fate as revolutionary Europe - its survival depends on returning an elusive treasure.... With her home torn by the loss of their spiritual leader, Lissandra Olympus, the heir apparent, seeks the help of the one man who might save them - renegade warrior Murdoch LeDroit. But Murdoch has turned his back on those who feared his extraordinary psychic powers and rejected him.

Aelynn, a tropical island veiled from human sight, magically protects a sacred chalice. When a beautiful maiden washes ashore from the outside world and steals the chalice, she sets in motion dangerous and far-reaching consequences.... Trystan l’Enforcer is Aelynn’s powerful guardian. To guarantee the isle’s safety, he plans to marry into a magically powerful family. His ambition is thwarted when his ship carries a sultry beauty onto the island’s hidden shores.

Nora Adams believes she is only a schoolteacher and a poor seaman's widow until the day she inherits a fortune, and her mother sends her to London to deliver a mysterious message to a newly arrived foreign princess - who looks much like Nora. Once Princess Elena receives Nora's missive, she steals Nora's identity and vanishes. Left adrift in unfamiliar waters wearing ill-fitting royal shoes, Nora determinedly sets out in search of the real royal.

Neville Perceval, the bankrupt Duke of Anglesey, has been burdened since youth with more responsibility than one man should handle. He has finally accepted that he needs to marry a wealthy, gracious lady who will ease his burdens and smooth his political path. Fiona MacDermot, the rebellious, untamed cousin of an Irish earl, has the freedom and independence Neville has never known. Like the duke, she needs cash to help starving villagers and orphans. Unfortunately, she'd rather earn a living than have anything to do with useless men, and the politicians she knows all belong at the wrong end of a rope.

Sparks fly when special forces meets psychic forces Brilliant psychic Nadine Malcolm is held prisoner in an asylum by her stepfather, a power-mad general. As the Librarian, she secretly hijacks computers to prevent his plans to turn paranormal children into weapons. When her younger sister ominously disappears, Nadine reaches through cyberspace for help. Ex-Special Forces warrior Magnus Oswin has focused his formidable talents on stopping the rogue general who once held him prisoner.

Abused and thrown from her wealthy home as a child, taken in and sheltered by peace-loving Quakers, Lady Alexandra Theodora Beaumont tries to lead the religious, obedient life of her adopted parents. But despite all her efforts, Pace Nicholls brings out the willful child she'd once been. Raised by a ruthless family, Pace must conceal his weakness for defending the less fortunate. But little Dora acts as his conscience, bringing out his worst flaws. To survive and achieve his ambitions, he must avoid her at all cost.

All the Malcolms have some magic, but Lady Felicity's ability to read people's emotions simply by touching them or their possessions overwhelms her. She's reached a marriageable age, but how can she ever wed when she can see so clearly a man's guilty secrets?

"Mac" MacTavish impulsively steals his late sister's neglected children, only to discover it's easier to handle a clipper in a hurricane than steer two ornery brats. What he needs is a nanny until he can take the children back to his parents in America. Bea Cavendish has settled for a quiet life of feathering her father's nest - until he dies, and she's left with an estate she doesn't know how to manage. Alone and terrified, she doesn't know what to make of the very big, very angry man appearing at her door with two adorable hooligans in tow.

On a long-delayed errand to remote Wycliffe Manor, ex-Lieutenant Jack de Sackville stumbles across the murdered body of London dandy, Basil Culpepper, in the hedgerow, a long way from his usual haunts. To Jack's dismay, he discovers the earl's daughter Culpepper hiding in Wycliffe's kitchen. Disguised as a lowly cook, Lady Elspeth Villiers may have liked to shoot Culpepper for ruining her life, but she dropped out of sight for more immediate reasons than an old scandal-her wealth has become the focus of greedy men.

Minerva Peniston, intrepid spinster and book lover, is determined to capture the villain who tried to shoot a duke at a book auction—imperiling her father's position and the only home she's ever known. And now the same wealthy bibliophiles are gathering at Wycliffe Manor . . .Paul Upton, overeducated and impoverished curate, has volunteered to assist the residents of Wycliffe Manor in preparing for a book auction to save the village and the manor's future. When an intriguing wallflower drags him into aiding her quest to find a potential killer, he agrees for her safety.

Spinster and secret novelist Clarissa Knightley and her gruff American engineer, Captain Huntley, along with their friend and cousin, the Honorable Jack de Sackville and Lady Elspeth, are to wed at last! In anticipation of the double wedding, friends and family are gathering at moldering Wycliffe Manor—until a dying stranger is discovered on the neglected grounds. Despite the tragedy, aristocratic wedding guests and their retinues, foreign and domestic, continue to arrive, not all by invitation.

Dorothea Franklin’s life is sliding toward disaster just as surely as her house is crumbling into the Pacific. Her unusual talent for feng shui can’t bring harmony to her invalid father or prevent her brother from dying in an experimental helicopter crash. Or has he? She turns to computer genius Conan Oswin, whose brother also reportedly died that day. When Dorothea informs Conan that she didn’t feel the vibrations of her brother’s death, he wants to dismiss her illogic