Devil's Brood Trilogy

Sebastian Cynster knows time is running out. If he doesn't choose a wife soon, his female relatives will line up to assist him. Yet the current debutantes do not appeal. Where is he to find the right lady to be his marchioness? Then Drake Varisey, eldest son of the Duke of Wolverstone, asks for Sebastian's aid. Having assumed his father's mantle in protecting queen and country, Drake must go to Ireland in pursuit of a dangerous plot. But he's received an urgent missive from Lord Ennis, an Irish peer-Ennis has heard something Drake needs to know and insists Drake attend an upcoming house party at his Kent estate so he can reveal his information face-to-face. Sebastian has assisted Drake before and, long ago, had a liaison with Lady Ennis. Drake insists Sebastian is just the man to be his surrogate at the house party-the guests will imagine all manner of possibilities and be blind to Sebastian's true purpose. Unsurprisingly, Sebastian is reluctant, but Drake's need is real. And with only more debutantes on his horizon, Sebastian allows himself to be persuaded. His first task is to inveigle Antonia Rawlings, a lady he has known all her life, to include him as her escort to the house party. Although he's seen little of Antonia in recent years, Sebastian is confident of gaining her support. Eldest daughter of the Earl of Chillingworth, Antonia has abandoned the search for a husband and plans to use the week of the house party to decide what to do with her life. There has to be some purpose, some role, she can claim for her own. Consequently, on hearing Sebastian's request and an explanation of what lies behind it, she seizes on the call to action. Suppressing her senses' idiotic reaction to Sebastian's nearness, she agrees to be his partner in intrigue. But while joining the house party proves easy, the gathering is thrown into chaos when Lord Ennis is murdered-just before he was to speak with Sebastian. Worse, Ennis's last words, gasped to Sebastian, are "Gunpowder. Here. "Gunpowder? And here? Where?With a killer continuing to stalk the halls, side by side, Sebastian and Antonia search for answers, and all the while, the childhood connection that has always existed between them strengthens and blooms into something so much more.

With his older brother's betrothal announced, Lord Michael Cynster is freed of all familial expectations. However, the allure of his previous hedonistic pursuits has paled. Then he learns of the mission his brother and his brother's fiancée have been assisting with and volunteers to help by hunting down a hoard of gunpowder now stashed somewhere in London. Michael's quest leads him to the Hendon Shipping Company, where his sole source of information is the fetchingly attractive Miss Cleome Hendon. When Michael asks about the carters who transported the gunpowder, Cleo offers him a bargain. She will lead him to the carters he seeks, but only if he agrees to include her as an equal partner in the mission. But their investigation proves dangerous, and the further they go in tracing the gunpowder, the more deaths they uncover. Soon Michael and Cleo find themselves tangled in a fight for their lives-one that forces them to face what has grown between them, to seize and defend what they both see as their path to the greatest adventure of all: a shared life, a shared future, a shared love.

Lord Drake Varisey, Marquess of Winchelsea, eldest son and heir of the Duke of Wolverstone, must foil a plot that threatens to shake the foundations of the realm, but the very last lady-nay, noblewoman-he needs assisting him is Lady Louisa Cynster, known throughout the ton as Lady Wild. For the past nine years, Louisa has suspected that Drake might well be the ideal husband for her, even though he's assiduous in avoiding her. But she's now twenty-seven and enough is enough. She believes propinquity will reveal exactly what it is that lies between them, and what better opportunity to work closely with Drake than this latest mission with which he patently needs her help? Unable to deny Louisa's abilities or the value of her assistance and powerless to curb her willfulness, Drake is forced to grit his teeth and acquiesce to her sticking by his side if only to ensure her safety. But all too soon, his true feelings for her surface sufficiently for her, perspicacious as she is, to see through his denials, which she then interprets as a challenge. Even while they gather information, tease out clues, increasingly desperately search for the missing gunpowder, and doggedly pursue the killer responsible for an ever-escalating tally of dead men, thrown together through the hours, he and she learn to trust and appreciate each other. And fed by constant exposure-and blatantly encouraged by her-their desires and hungers swell and grow...As the barriers between them crumble, the attraction he has for so long restrained burgeons and balloons, until goaded by her near-death, it erupts, and he seizes her-only to be seized in return. Linked irrevocably and with their wills melded and merged by passion's fire, with time running out and the evil mastermind's deadline looming, together, they focus their considerable talents and make one last push to learn the critical truths-to find the gunpowder and unmask the villain behind this far-reaching plot. Only to discover that they have significantly less time than they'd thought, that the villain's target is even more crucially fundamental to the realm than they'd imagined, and it's going to take all that Drake is-as well as all that Louisa as Lady Wild can bring to bear-to defuse the threat, capture the villain, and make all safe and right again. As they race to the ultimate confrontation, the future of all England rests on their shoulders.