Bøger af Jude Knight

When Laurel jilts her fiancé will it bring her scandal? Or everything she has ever wanted? When Lady Laureline Barker asks Mrs. Dove Lyons to find her a husband, she does not expect one of her choices to be the man she admired years ago, when she was still a schoolgirl-the man who rescued her from drowning. He is also a war hero, famed for trading his own freedom and health for the safety of others. Laurel is committed to a contest, with the winner taking her and her dowry. Can she back out? And will he still want her if she does? Angelico Warrington doesn't expect Laurel to remember him. Even if she does, why should she favor him over other suitors? She is the respected sister to an earl, with only one flaw on her reputation-she refused to marry a cad who had been putting off their wedding date for five years. Angel is a musician in a gambling den, unable to walk without crutches, and with no place in the Society to which Laurel belongs. This apparently ill-assorted couple are a perfect match, but history must repeat itself and secrets be revealed before they can win their happy ending.

He is imprisoned. She is cast out. But neither will give up on their love.When the Earl of Spenhurst declares his love for a merchant's niece, he is locked away in a tower. Spen won't get out, the marquess his father says, until he agrees to an arranged marriage.After the marquess unceremoniously ejects Cordelia Milton from his country mansion, she is determined to rescue her beloved, but it all goes horribly wrong.She needs time to recover from her injuries, and Spen has been moved across the country under heavy guard. It seems impossible for two young lovers to overcome the selfish plans of two powerful peers, but they won't give up.A Twist Upon a Regency TaleLady Beast's BridegroomOne Perfect DanceSnowy and the Seven DovesPerchance to DreamWeave me a RopeThe Sincerest FlatteryInviting the WildHold Me FastThe Trials of Benedict

Scarred by life, they have abandoned dreams of romance. Until love's kiss awakens them.Life is richer than he expected.John Forsythe abandons London for the furthest reaches of England after a series of betrayals leave him with the shame of a very public divorce, a poor opinion of Society ladies and a heart armored against love. Protected from intruders by his servants, the Thornes, he spends his days with his daughter and in a workshop where he makes clockwork automata.Life is better than she deserves.Pauline Turner has reformed in the years since she joined in her mother's attempts to destroy her step-brother. Eschewing social position and forgetting dreams of marriage and her own home, she is content with space to breed roses and her status as a favorite sister and aunt.A kiss awakens them...When a storm forces Pauline to defy John's ban on visitors, she and John each strike a chord in the other. Though they awaken to the possibility of love, they each have their own lives.... but the trials that follow tear them apartWhen his ex-wife's husband steals John's beloved daughter, Pauline steps in to steal her back. The journey that follows takes them across the sea to Paris and into the depths of their hearts.A Twist Upon a Regency TaleLady Beast's BridegroomOne Perfect DanceSnowy and the Seven DovesPerchance to Dream

A lady smuggler, an escaped slave, a maiden in a gold-mining boom town and a gothic story of a forced marriage and wicked relativesHand-Turned Tales is designed so that readers can try Jude's story-telling before they buy her other books. Or, if you already like her books, enter her fictional world again in four different situations.In The Raven's Lady, Felix returns home in disguise after 13 years. He plans to catch a smuggler then take up his viscountcy. He does not expect the smuggler to be Joselyn, his childhood sweetheart. (Short story: 5,500 words)In Kidnapped to Freedom, Phoebe is stolen away from her plantation by a handsome masked pirate. (Short story: 5,100 words)All that Glisters is set in New Zealand in the 1860s, a time when gold miners poured into the fledgling settlement of Dunedin. Rose is unhappy in the household of her fanatical uncle. Thomas, a young merchant from Canada, offers a glimpse of another possible life. If she is brave enough to reach for it. (Short story: 13,000 words)The Prisoners of Wyvern Castle is a gothic historical romance set in the world of my novels and novella. Rupert has been imprisoned by his wicked sister, and forced to wed. His new wife, Madeline, has likewise been threatened into saying her vows. Forced into marriage, they find love, but can they find freedom before it is too late? The Prisoners of Wyvern Castle is a prequel to Revealed in Mist. (Novella: 23,500 words)

The abducted bride; the upright earl. The only place they match is over the chess board.Lady Osbourne's famed matchmaking skills may not be enough to find a match for Miss Amaryllis Fernhill, who was abducted right out of the church in front of her groom and has been no one knows where for six years.Nathan Belvoir, Earl of Hythe, wants a countess that will live up to his illustrious name and embellish his diplomatic and political career. Miss Fernhill is obviously unsuitable. Why, then, can he not look away?

As the Duchess of Haverford's companion, Cedrica Grenford is not treated as a poor relation and is encouraged to mingle with Her Grace's guests. Perhaps among the gentlemen gathered for the duchess's house party, she will find a suitable husband? Marcel Fournier has only one ambition: to save enough from his fees serving as chef in the houses of the ton to become the proprietor of his own fine restaurant. An affair with the duchess's dependent would be dangerous. Anything else is impossible. Isn't it?

When Viscount Avery comes to see the best invalid chair maker in the southwest of England he does not expect to find Minerva Bradshaw, the woman who rejected him three years earlier. Or did she? Older and wiser, he wonders if there is more to the story. For three years, Min Bradshaw has remembered the handsome guardsman who courted her for her fortune. She didn't expect to see him in her workshop, and she certainly doesn't intend to let him fool her again. Even if he is handsomer and more charming than ever. Candle's Christmas Chair is a sweet traditional novella set in late Georgian England. When Candle finds the woman who has been haunting his dreams for three years, he quickly realises that, whatever causes her to flee his courtship three years ago, it wasn't what he'd been told at the time. Now he has until she finishes the chair for his mother to convince her to marry him. Min is a carriage-maker's daughter. Educated beyond her station, she once dreamed of stepping into the fairy tale world of the ton, only to have her dreams crushed. Now the man she cannot forget is back, and he seems determined to raise those false hopes all over again. But she only has to hold out until she finishes the chair for his mother, and she can walk away again.

Fashionable London holds nothing for wealthy merchant's niece, Lalamani Finchurch. Except perhaps for an earl with a twisted hand and a charming smile. Why, for all the fortune hunters she has fended off since returning from India, is the one man who seems to like her so against marrying for money? Philip has inherited an earldom so impoverished that his only two choices are to marry for money or to abandon Society altogether and return to his work as an engineer. Which is no choice at all, until a tiny woman with beautiful eyes and a fine mind dances with him on his last night in London. When they meet again in a small country village, they join forces to uncover larceny and deceit, to rescue Lalamani's aunt from poverty, and to discover that pride is a poor reason to refuse a love for a lifetime.

Come sample my wares: four short stories and a novella to entertain and surprise you. The Lost Wife> The Heart of a Wolf> My Lost Highland Love> Magnus and the Christmas Angel> The Lost Treasure of Lorne For nearly 300 years, the Normingtons and the Lorimers have feuded, since a love affair ended in a curse that doomed dead Lorimers to haunt their home, the Castle of Lorne. Now the last Marquis of Lorne, the last of the Lorimers, is one of those ghosts, and the Duke of Kendal, head of the House of Normington, holds the castle. Kendal doesn't care about the feud or the ghosts. He wants only to find the evidence that will legitimate the son his Lorimer bride bore him before her death, and to convince his stubborn housekeeper to marry him. But the time allotted to the curse is running out, and his happiness depends on finding the Lost Treasure of Lorne before the 300 years draws to a close. (novella)

A fallen woman, she dreams of landing on her feet, until unexpected news threatens disaster Becky is the envy of the courtesans of the demi-monde - the indulged mistress of the wealthy and charismatic Marquis of Aldridge. But she dreams of a normal life; one in which her daughter can have a future that does not depend on beauty, sex, and the whims of a man. Finding herself with child, she hesitates to tell Aldridge. Will he cast her off, send her away, or keep her and condemn another child to this uncertain shadow world? The devil-may-care face Hugh shows to the world hides a desperate sorrow; a sorrow he tries to drown with drink and riotous living. His years at war haunt him, but even more, he doesn't want to think about the illness that robbed him of the ability to father a son. When he dies, his barony will die with him. His title will fall into abeyance, and his estate will be scooped up by the Crown. When Aldridge surprises them both with a daring proposition, they do not expect love to be part of the bargain.

He thought he had buried his heart with his children. He was wrong.Hidden from the earl who hunts them, Anne and her sisters have been accepted into the heart of a tiny rural village. Until another earl comes visiting.Rede lives to avenge the deaths of his wife and children. After three long years of searching, he is closing in on the ruthless villains who gave the orders, and he does not hope to survive the final encounter. Until he meets Anne. As their inconvenient attraction grows, a series of near fatal attacks draws them together and drives them apart. When their desperate enemies combine forces, Anne and Rede must trust one another to survive. Farewell to Kindness is Book 1 in the series The Golden Redepennings. Candle and Min, hero and heroine of my free novella, Candle's Christmas Chair, make a cameo appearance in Farewell to Kindness.

Prue's job is to uncover secrets, but she hides a few of her own. When she is framed for murder and cast into Newgate, her one-time lover comes to her rescue. Will revealing what she knows help in their hunt for blackmailers, traitors, and murderers? Or threaten all she holds dear? Enquiry agent David solves problems for the ton, but will never be one of them. When his latest case includes his legitimate half-brothers as well as the woman who left him months ago, he finds the past and the circumstances of his birth difficult to ignore. Danger to Prue makes it impossible.

Lord Abersham and Lady Sarah are the best of friends and too young for affairs of the heart-but they are growing up fast. After nine months touring the Continent with his parents, Toad Abersham will soon be sent away to finish his education, and Sally Grenford has years to wait before she is old enough to be presented at Court and married to the man she's loved since the cradle.Sally has only four weeks filled with mistletoe and holiday outings to convince Toad to see her as a woman, in her first long dress, impeded by the sudden distance he is placing between them. But she has never let Toad's reticence stop her from dragging him into mischief before.Toad battles rising lustful feelings for his best friend, an innocent whom he would not hurt for the world. However, still captivated by his newly acquired skills as a rake-about-town, he is not remotely prepared to be married. But since he has never been able to say no to Sally, Toad is led to indiscretions he would never commit with another young lady.For her part, Sally is delighted Toad can be so easily led.This collection also includes other short stories about Toad, Sal, their parents, cousins, and friends, offering hours of enjoyment during your holiday season.

Their marriage is a fiction. Their enemies want them destroyed before they can make it real.Ella survived an abusive and philandering husband, in-laws who hate her, and public scorn. But she's not sure she will survive love. It is too late to guard her heart from the man forced to pretend he has married such a disreputable widow, but at least she will not burden him with feelings he can never return. Alex understands his supposed wife never wishes to remarry. And if she had chosen to wed, it would not have been to him. He should have wooed her when he was whole, when he could have had her love, not her pity. But it is too late now. She looks at him and sees a broken man. Perhaps she will learn to bear him. In their masquerade of a marriage, Ella and Alex soon discover they are more well-matched than they expected. But then the couple's blossoming trust is ripped apart by a malicious enemy. Two lost souls must together face the demons of their past to save their lives and give their love a future.

She runs away from unwanted complications and into disaster. Saving her has become a habit Rick doesn't want to break. Lieutenant Rick Redepenning has been saving his admiral's intrepid daughter from danger since their formative years, but today, he faces the gravest of threats-the damage she might do to his heart. How can he convince her to see him as a suitor, not just a childhood friend? Travelling with her father's fleet has left Mary Pritchard ill-prepared for London Society, and prey to the machinations of false friends. When she strikes out on her own to find a more suitable locale to take up her solitary spinsterhood, she finds adventure, trouble, and her girlhood hero, riding once more to her rescue.

Ruth Winderfield is miserable in London''s ballrooms, where her family''s wealth and questions over her birth make her a target for the unscrupulous and a pariah to the high-sticklers. Trained as a healer, she is happiest in a sickroom. When a smallpox epidemic traps her at the remote manor of a reclusive lord, the last thing she expects is to find her heart''s desire.Valentine, Earl of Ashbury, was carried home from war three years ago, unconscious, a broken man. He woke to find his family in ruins, his faithless wife and treacherous brother dead, his family''s two girl children exiled to school. He becomes a near recluse while he spends his days trying to restore the estate, or at least prevent further crumbling.When an impertinent, bossy female turns up with several sick children, including the two girls, he reluctantly gives them shelter. Unable to stand by and watch the suffering, he begins to help with the nursing, while he falls irrevocably for both girls and the lovely Ruth.The epidemic over, Ruth and Val part ways, each reluctant to share how they feel without a sign from the other. Ruth returns to her family and the ton. Val begins to build a new life centred on his girls. But danger to Ruth is a clarion call Val cannot ignore. If they can stop the villains determined to destroy them, perhaps the hermit and the healer can mend one another''s hearts.

The beauty known as the Winderfield Diamond hides a ruinous secret. Society's newest viscount holds the key.Sarah Winderfield has refused every offer of marriage she has received since Nathaniel Beauclair convinced her to run away with him seven years ago, and then disappeared without a word or a trace. But now she needs a husband. She has a child to love and to protect, and the child needs a father.She does not expect to meet Nate also on the marriage mart. Should she let him explain? Can she believe him?Dragged back to England to feed his father's pride in family, Nate refuses to give into the man's demands that he take a wife. Those who beat and abducted him seven years ago said the only woman he will ever love would be married within the month to a husband chosen by her father. But when he finds that Sarah is still single, he rushes to London. Surely, they can find again the promise they believed in when they were young?Through a labyrinth of old rumours and new enemies, two long-lost lovers must decide whether or not to claim one another, and win the bright future they both desire.

Sparks flew a year ago when the Granite Earl kissed the Ice Princess. In the depths of another winter, fire still smoulders under the frost between themCan the Ice Maiden Soften the Granite Earl?Her scandalous birth prevents Matilda Grenford from being fully acceptable to Society, even though she has been a ward of the Duchess of Haverford since she was a few weeks old. Matilda does not expect to be wooed by a worthy gentleman. The only man who has ever interested her gave her an outrageous kiss a year ago and has avoided her ever since.Can the Granite Earl Melt the Ice Maiden?Charles, the Earl of Hamner is honour bound to ignore his attraction to Matilda Grenford. She is an innocent and a lady, and in every way worthy of his respect-but she is base-born. His ancestors would rise screaming from their graves if he made her his countess. But he cannot forget the kiss they once shared.(This novella first appeared in the Bluestocking Belles anthology Fire & Frost)

James yearns to end a long journey in the arms of his loving family. But his father's agents offer the exiled prodigal forgiveness and a place in Society - if he abandons his foreign-born wife and children to return to England.With her husband away, Mahzad faces revolt, invasion and betrayal in the mountain kingdom they built together. A queen without her king, she will not allow their dream and their family to be destroyed.