Showing results by author "Martha Keyes" in All Categories

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.

Cecilia Cosgrove’s beauty opens doors and hearts everywhere she goes. With a marquess courting her, the status and wealth her family is counting on her to obtain is finally within her reach—until she meets a French nobleman who immediately pegs her as affected and superficial. Poor émigré Jacques Levesque has been disguised as a French nobleman for almost as long as he can remember, trying his hardest to keep his head down in a society obsessed with rank and high birth. But when Cecilia Cosgrove comes into his life, he finds it hard to maintain his façade—or to want to.

Wild horses couldn’t drag me back to the small island where I grew up, but you know what can? Making sure the Palmer family–aka the worst neighbors ever–show appropriate respect to the newest resident of their retirement center: my grandma. But as soon as Grams moves in, her shenanigans put her at risk of being kicked out. Since she’s set on staying in Sunset Harbor until her last breath and there’s no way I’m staying on this nightmare island to take care of her. Enter Beau Palmer, the infuriatingly charming local cop who’s got the connections to keep Grams right where she needs to be.

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. 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.

My friendship with Stevie has survived a lot, including the day I caught the crazy bug and told her I wanted to be more than friends. Thankfully, that’s far behind us. I’m here for Stevie—as a friend—now that she needs a soft place to land away from the gossip-hungry tabloids. There's just one problem: I may have seriously underestimated the power of the paparazzi—and possibly my feelings. Both seem bent on bringing the past into the present, but there's no way I'm going down the road to rejection a second time.

Georgiana Paige is on the shelf after eight full Seasons in London and not a single offer of marriage. When the opportunity to act as companion to her spinster aunt presents itself, she jumps at the chance to escape the Marriage Mart and embark on a new adventure. Upon her eventful arrival in the tiny Yorkshire village, though, she finds herself confronted with a man who both piques her interest and provokes her pride.

After nearly ten years in the army, Hamish Campbell is ready to settle in and call a place home. His sights are set on Dalmore House, the Campbell family estate seized by the Crown after the '45 uprising. To have any chance at all of regaining it, he must not only find the money to pay off the estate’s debts but also persuade the man who has charge of it to relinquish the property into the hands of a Jacobite’s son.

After being dumped last Christmas, I’m taking extreme measures to ensure nothing and no one ruins my happy holidays this time around. I’ll be safely wrapped in a cocoon of kitschy Christmas decor, complete with surrounding winter wonderland at the ultimate holiday mountain cabin. So what if the countless elf figurines make me a little uneasy or if there are a couple hiccups with cabin maintenance? There’s a bigger problem: the assistant manager happens to be one of (many) teasing classmates from my childhood and my former crush.

No one stands in doubt of Edith Donne's opinion on marriage—or of her ability to ward it off using nothing but her stinging wit. With the fortune her aunt has left her, Edith has no reason to marry and certainly no intention of it. When she inadvertently overhears that her lifelong archrival is in love with her, she is stunned, but she has no compunction in setting him straight.

Isla Findlay belongs nowhere. The daughter of a disgraced woman and the Highlander who abandoned them both, she tries to be a dutiful niece to the uncle who has taken her in, blending into the village as best she can. But when a young Highlander's arrival in the area coincides with an outbreak of dreaded smallpox, it stirs up questions about Isla's past and forces a confrontation between the beliefs she holds and the community she wants to belong to.

By day, Reginald Sinclair works in the post office, but by night, he is the increasingly infamous Paladin, the gallant highwayman making young women swoon all over Somerset. With a vendetta against the wealthy that spans both past and present, Reggie's escapades allow him to take justice into his own hands while helping his uncle avoid insolvency.

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.

Elena MacKinnon has spent the last seven years training to become a proper English lady. When her childhood friend, Captain Theo Donovan, returns from serving in the Navy, he brings along with him Elena’s humiliation for the ill-advised and ardent love letter she wrote him before his departure, which he ignored entirely. Elena hopes to simultaneously stifle his memory of the letter and make him regret overlooking her, showing him just how fine an English lady she can be. The only problem? She is not English but a proud Scot—and her heart may be more enamored with Theo than ever.

Glenna Douglas may be the daughter of a humble crofter, but she dreams of becoming the innkeeper of Glengour Inn, where she has worked for years. Her problems are two-fold: first, she cannot read or write; second, the landlord has chosen a gentleman who has never set foot in Glengour to manage the inn. She is determined to prove herself more capable than the newcomer—but she may need a bit of help from him to do it.

Rule number one of Christmas cabin trips? Don’t show up single when your friend brings her new boyfriend—especially when he happens to be your ex. Rule number two? If you’re about to break rule one…bring a fake boyfriend. Which is exactly how Reese Cameron ends up with Cole Bradley. He may be a contractor rather than an actor, but he’s convincing enough at the boyfriend gig to make her wonder if it’s really all an act.