A Harlequin Romance

The glamorous, successful folk singer Sara Winchester was trying to make a fundamental decision—whether or not to marry a charming, eminently suitable man, who was very much a part of her world and who loved her deeply. But still she hesi-tated. Whys It was for a reason that took her back six years—to another, utterly different world. In those days Sara had been little more than a gipsy, roaming the huge, untamed stretches of the Orinoco River of Venezuela with her stepfather. Sara would have been happy for it to have gone on for ever, but everything changed when her stepfather died and left her in the charge of another, very different roamer, Jonathan Logan. Whatever might happen In the future. Sara soon knew that between her and her guardian had been forged a link that would never subsequently be broken . .

It was unfortunate, but inevitable Tess realized. Since their arrival on the west coast of Canada four years ago, she and her father had dreamed of developing the guest house by the lovely lake at the foot of the Rockies. But now her father was dead and her mother had decided to return to England, leaving Tess with no alternative but to follow as soon everything had been wound up. So the house was put up for sale and all Tess had to do was to wait for a prospective buyer. He materialised - in the form of a coolly domineering wretch of a man who not only wanted to take over the guest house, but apparently organise Tess's life for her as well. In no time at all things had slipped right out of her grasp and into the large strong hands of Mr. Steve Fenner - and there didn't seem to be a thing Tess could do about it. She was quite powerless to defy the man - but, to be honest, did she really want to?

When the physiotherapist Sally Yorke left the Beckmoor Orthopaedic Home in order to look after a patient at Morocco’s fabulous Hotel Mirador, she found herself with more on her hands than she had expected. Not only did she find her patient, Mike Ritchie, in a defeatist mood, but she found that Mike’s cousin, the owner of the Mirador, the immensely successful Dane Ryland, was an autocratic man with an inclination to run other people’s lives—including Sally’s. Sally herself was not the sort of girl to let anybody run her life, and yet Dane was accustomed always to getting his own way. Who would win?

Maxwell Perring was a surgeon with a special distinction about him; "star quality" it might have been called in another profession. Nurse Alma Miles admired his work, but had never thought about him as a man. All her thinking of that sort was centered on Jeremy Truscott -- and he was presenting quite a problem.

Anya, is a 'displaced person'; a young girl who formost of her life had known nothing but the ugliness and hardship of various refugee camps. Then came the day when her life was strangely linked with an English party visiting Bavaria. David Manworth was the first to wish to help her; his cousin Bertram's professional eye saw in her possibilities for a stage career; kind Mrs Preston wanted to make her one of the family; only Celia Preston, with an eye on David, was unwelcoming. Returning to England with them, Anya found that even in a secure and prosperous world there can be doubts and anxieties; but in the end she was to attain a happiness greater than she had ever dared to imagine.

The love of young Catriona Quentin‘s life was her brother’s two baby daughters, and when he died and her jealous sister-in-law refused to allow her near them, Catriona was so bitterly hurt that she vowed never again to let her feelings get involved in love for anyone else. Perhaps, then, it was not the most sensible thing for her to have taken a job as housemother at Camp Universe, for it was difficult not to get emotionally involved with the deprived and orphaned children in her charge. While as for Doctor David Jasper ….

At the age of twenty, Claire Wyndham went out to the lovely island of Santa Catarina. She was prepared to be enchanted by the beautiful island - but she was very far from prepared for the overwhelming attraction of the forceful Portuguese aristocrat, the Conde Manuel de Castro. Claire could not avoid being thrown constantly into his company, but from the beginning there was antagonism between the charming and imperious Conde and the young and sensitive English girl. Manuel was polite, devastating - but clearly uninterested in Claire as a woman. How, after all, could he be otherwise when the beautiful singer Francesca Alvares was so obviously suited to him in every way?

When Uncle Niall left his Canadian fruit farm equally between his manager and his niece Lucie, with the proviso that Lucie should spend a month there, it seemed obvious that he was hoping to set the scene for romance. It also seemed, though, that there were certain factors he couldn’t have taken into account. There was the character of Lucie herself, not easily rushed into decisions; there was her gay friend Dinah, unrivalled as an upsetter of carefully laid plans; there was Matt Leverson the forceful neighbour, whose supposed designs on the farm caused Lucie some anxiety. It looked as though the old mans’ hopes might be disappointed; or had he after all, foreseen and intended a different ending to the story.

War is coming for the dragon knights...but love may find them first. A chance meeting with a young male dragon seals the fate of one adventurous female poacher. The dragon's partner, a ruggedly handsome knight named Gareth, takes one look at the shapely woman and decides to do a little poaching of his own. Sir Gareth both seduces and falls deeply in love with the girl who is not only unafraid of dragons but also possesses a rare gift--she can hear the beasts' silent speech. He wants her for his mate, but mating with a knight is no simple thing. To accept a knight, a woman must also accept the dragon, the dragon's mate...and her knight, Lars, too. She is at first shocked, then intrigued by the lusty life in the Lair. But war is in the making and only the knights and dragons have a chance at ending it before it destroys their land and their lives.

Joanna had found that being the daughter of a world-famous celebrity can bring its problems; and when things got too much for her she decided to get away for a while. So she took a job as summer help on a Canadian ranch, without letting anyone, even her fiancé, know where she was. She was rather disconcerted to find herself the only woman on a primitive ranch, miles from anywhere, with one overbearing rancher, the three obstreperous children he had taken into his care, twenty cow-hands, and several thousand cattle. If anyone ever needed a wife, she thought, it was Rafe Holford -- though she pitied any girl who might try to cope with such a man! All the same, when a young woman appeared on the scene who was clearly ideal for the position, Joanna found that it was not pity, but a much more surprising feeling that was aroused in her!

Kay found her situation incredible. She had come out from England to do a welfare job - straightforward enough in itself, though in strange exotic surroundings - and here she was marooned on an uninhabited island in the Indian Ocean, alone with two men of utterly different personalities. There was Jeff, handsome and lazy, who loved good times and had never talked of marriage, but who might fall in love from the sheer lack of anything else to do. And there was this other man, big, dark and incalculable, and apparently not at all fond of women, but who would be the one to get the three of them out of there if anyone could. In fact they were not stranded for very long, but by the time they got back to civilisation Kay knew that her whole life had taken a new direction - whether for good or ill, she could not tell.

Life on the airways wasn't all glamour. Sally was thrilled when she began her new job as stewardess for Lancing Airways. She quickly made friends with her co-workers and her future looked bright. There was only one major problem. She found it impossible to get along with the airline's stern, uncompromising director, Dick Sutherland. He was a man who demanded utmost efficiency and would brook not the slightest slipup. In spite of all her efforts to avoid trouble, a clash was inevitable.

In her work as assistant to Dr. Ben Vaughan at the tiny town of Port Quentin, Laurette had never encountered any man who remotely stirred her heart — until one stormy day when Charles Heron skilfully sailed his uncle’s yacht into the tricky harbour. When Laurette was bandaging Charles’ injured arm, she decided on the spot that he was an autocrat who thought too much of himself, and for his part it seemed that he could not forgive her the crime of being only nineteen; all of which provoked her into hostile reaction. Unfortunately he got on well with her father, and Laurette found herself unable to avoid or ignore him. Then suddenly she realized she was in love with him—and she meant nothing at all in his life...”

Miss Merriden was a benevolent autocrat whose rule over a small North country village was cheerfully accepted by most of those whom it concerned. But perhaps she went rather too far in engineering a fictitious engagement between her grandson, Robert, and the pretty school mistress, Monica Page – particularly as Monica considered that she had the best of reasons for disliking Robert. It was a situation that even Mrs Merriden was to find she couldn’t completely control.

Rennie Gaynor found Kent Bradfield’s criticisms of the way she and her father ran their farm quite intolerable. It was true that they were rather poor and unused to South Africa, but Kent’s assurance and good looks annoyed her. It was not until Rennie’s sophisticated friend Jackie came to stay with the Gaynors and showed a distinct interest in Kent, that Rennie herself found that her feelings for Kent were something deeper than anger. In “Mayenga Farm” Kathryn Blair describes how these two stubborn people, Rennie and Kent, came to realize that they needed each other.

A boys' public school, set in a pleasant old cathedral town, is the background for this charming story of Ingrid Southbrook, who came to keep house for her brother during his wife's illness. Sylvia Southbrook also had a brother, rather celebrity, and Ingrid had no doubt that he would be a selfish and disagreeable as Sylvia herself. But Ingrid would have been surprised to know that her meeting with Patrick was destined to change the whole course of her life.

There is no part of Africa with more potentialities than Kenya, and when Penelope inherited a farm there she was confident that she could run it single-handed. Her neighbor, Paul Conway, declared that she couldn't--which only made her all the more determined to prove him wrong!

Karen was young and vulnerable and very much in love with her new husband, and it was a shattering blow when she found, only a few days after the wedding, that he had only married her to further his own career — as a Government official in the romantic South Sea Islands. What was she to do now? One thing was certain — she could never stop loving him.

He was famous, she was a nobody. Erica was heartbroken. She'd been forced to give up her musical training and hopes for a career as a concert pianist. For suddenly, with the death of her stepmother, she had to devote all her time to housekeeping. Then fate lent a hand. Erica met the dynamic Charles Winlake, an eminent conductor. And he, dismayed at this waste of young talent, took an interest in Erica ... an interest that became far more than just professional!

Sandra had gone a long way - from England to New Zealand - to get away from a love affair that had gone wrong. She soon fell in love with her new home - but it was far too early to fall in love with another man, as she told Blake firmly when he asked her to marry him. Or so she thought - until she met Rob Farr and lost her heart to him almost on sight. And much good that would do her, for it was more than clear that all Rob's interest and affection was reserved for the lovely Lisa Maybury.....

The impoverished Greeve family used to say in moments of financial crisis, 'There's always Great-Aunt Tabitha' — thinking of the fortune which the very old lady was due to leave them. The one exception was Leslie Greeve, for whom the future meant only Oliver Bendick — the man it was generally agreed she would one day marry. But when Great-Aunt Tabitha did considerately die, the way ahead was not so simple as it had seemed. Into their lives (not least Leslie's) burst Reid Carthay, self-confident, cynical, a disturbing stranger with power to affect all the members of the Greeve family without exception...

No, Ann confided to her godmother, there was not the slightest possibility that she would fall in love with her new employer, Michael Falcon, the head of St. Cyprian's Preparatory School. He was inconsiderate, unreasonable, dogmatic; he was also engaged to a beautiful but most unpleasant girl; and he thought that Ann was frivolous and had far too good an opinion of herself. Quite obviously two such people could never like or understand one another, and it was a good thing that he was only filling in at St. Cyprians for one term. At least they weren't indifferent to each other, and even out of such unpromising beginnings romance can grow. All of which showed that Ann still had a great deal to learn about love and life!

After Myles O'Malley's death Johanna wasn't sure why she had come to Ireland to seek out his family, when they didn't even know she had known him, let alone that she had planned to marry him. And when she had met Shay and Douglas O'Malley, Johanna was even less sure....

When Antonia agreed to go as secretary-companion to her unknown Aunt Harriet, she did not take very seriously the promise that she would be made the old lady's heiress. She was startled, therefore, when on arrival she found that the estate was a considerable one and that there was a dispossessed nephew in the person of her attractive cousin, Giles, who had quarreled with their aunt over his engagement to Vanessa. Characteristically, Antonia set herself to reconcile aunt and nephew, and in doing so uncovered some very strange fragments of family history. She found something else too - her own conviction that Vanessa was not the right girl for Giles.

A night of heavy snow, and dogs barking outside an old Cotswold farmhouse.... When Nancy and her two sisters went out to see what was the matter, they found a handsome stranger unconscious in a snowdrift. They and their parents saved his life; but when he recovered consciousness, he could not remember anything about himself. He stayed on to get work on a neighboring estate - and so began a warm and tender love-story.

Three months of luxury, at an exclusive seaside resort, and all at Aunt Gabrielle's expense! Elaine would indeed have considered herself lucky, had there not been one very, very delicate condition attached to the situation -- a condition on which her whole future depended. She held out no great hopes that she would succeed, but what was to become of her if she did not?

To leave London for a remote Northumbrian village may sound like a descent into dullness; but Veronica Benley found it quite the reverse. An only child, she was enchanted by life with the Elveys —a large family, gay and affectionate, who joyously accepted her as one of themselves. Then came romance—and for a time it seemed as if the claims of love were in conflict with those of the friends who had come to depend on her. Could she possibly take her own happiness at the expense of theirs?

1796 Miranda was delighted when her boss asked her to accompany him on a business cruise to the Caribbean, even though she knew the whole purpose of the trip was a large take-over bid and that there would be as much work as play. But when it came to sweet-talking one Roger Gallant, she realized she had taken on more than she could manage. Roger was clearly in the habit of taking what he wanted and then throwing it away - and it did look as if Miranda was going to be his latest victim!

Margaret Dunne went to Rowanbank at Scotland as a private nurse to pull herself out of the doldrums. All went well until she met her employer's son, the insufferable Richard Morrell, who greeted her with the words "Plain, wholesome and oh, so good for us!". It was the beginning of a relationship part bitter, part stimulating until Margaret realised she loved him.

Laurie thought that marriage would open the door to a happy and carefree life, but she soon acquired a loved and loving husband, but an unwelcome admirer and a jealous, desperate enemy, who between them were almost to wreck her marriage. Laurie, however, found a way to defeat them and establish her own plan for happy living.

When Nicola set out on a short motoring holiday, she vaguely hoped to encounter some sort of adventure. She wasn't prepared, however, for the bewildering net of events in which she found herself caught. To lose her way was bad enough, but to find herself involved in a dramatic, sudden death, to become the temporary guardian of a small girl -- and then to have the course of her own life changed. This was more than Nicola had bargained for. How she became involved in the complicated pattern of a strange household, and how, after anxieties and disappointments, she eventually found love and happiness, make an enthralling story.

They had met by chance in circumstances of danger and embarrassment. Both of them believed that love was well lost for money, although they had no money and fell in love with each other. If they ran true to their beliefs, they would say goodbye and pursue their preordained course. Could they?

Miranda was in the unhappy position of being married to one man while loving another. But Sim was such a kind and affectionate husband that the marriage might yet have work out had Jeff not come back into their lives again.

Selina was going to marry Roger Peters -- but unless they waited another three years, Selina would forfeit a large legacy and lose her beloved Tall Tops. She was prepared to wait; so was Roger. That maddening Joel Grant had no right to be so sarcasiic about it all.

Madeleine was the good-natured type of girl who always finds it had to say 'no' to a request to help a friend - so when her friend Fiona was asked to act as temporary housekeeper to her cousin Robert Austin in Scotland, and for reasons of her own suggested that Madeleine should take her place, Madeleine once again found herself agreeing. She found herself accepted as Fiona, but, in the house of the 'Black Austins', it was not long before complications set in - and the biggest of them was Jake Austin. It was soon clear to Madeleine that he had seen through her deception - but why did he say nothing about it to Robert? Was it true that Jake had been responsible for the death of his brother Alastair? And how far was he involved with Isobel? Madeleine felt the net of mystery closing more and more tightly round her... what could she do to escape it?

It was a considerable surprise to Naomi when she found herself in charge of a young niece and a large house in at charming Dorsetshire village, and without much money to keep either of them. But she had reckoned without the kindly villagers of Monks Portle, to whom the whole topic was of burning interest, and who proceeded to take the entire affair into their own capable hands. So far, so good, and Naomi was touched and grateful for their help but when they proceeded to organise her love life as well, she began to wonder if things had not gone a little too far!

Jessica's plans for the future depended entirely on her unknown but reputedly harsh landlord, and she was understandably nervous about her forthcoming interview with him. So it was a welcome surprise when he turned out to be young, good-looking, and only too willing to help her.

It’s a tough world, and you are soft!” The two week educational cruise started badly for Kate Cameron. She had found a young stowaway for whom she felt sympathetically responsible and had therefore fallen foul of Mark Templar, the powerful Chief Officer and, unexpectedly, her ex-fiancee was on board. “Just remember, Kate,” the Chief Officer said, “that he is ex., don’t try to revive anything.” Kate had told herself the same thing but she resented Mark’s advice. It wasn’t any of his business anyway.

Aunt Irene was just as selfish as Aunt Jane, just as determined to exploit Jocelyn to the uttermost under the pretext of "giving her a home". Still, Jocelyn felt that in leaving Jane for Irene she had made a change for the better. There was the lovely country house instead of Bloomsbury; there was kind Uncle Philip; and there was Richard Barnewell. And whenever he spoke to her, she could say to herself, happily: "This could never have happened at Aunt Jane's."

Nicola had grown accustomed to being the 'poor relation' of the Round family. They had adopted her when she was orphaned, and been casually kind to her ever since -- then dismissed her, equally kindly, as a nobody. Still, her cousins were exceptionally pretty and talented, while Nicola herself had nothing to commend her but a plain face and a nice nature. It would, of course, be nice to be noticed and admired, but where was the man who was likely to do that? Then she met Piers Mason, who certainly was interested in her -- until he turned out to be not quite what he seemed. And what about his stern but attractive cousin Leigh? Would Nicola have any better luck with him?

Five years ago, when she was eighteen, Amanda had been frightened rather than flattered by Cesare Druetso’s proposal of marriage. She had been determined not to be yet another scalp on Cesare’s belt – or a slave to his masterful ways – and she had categorically turned him down. But now she was back in his home in Tuscany, this time engaged to his younger brother, gentler brother Piero. But Cesare, it soon turned out, had no intention of accepting the situation. He refused to acknowledge Amanda as his brother’s fiancée, declaring that she was meant for him and for no one else – and his whole family, indeed the whole town, appeared to be backing him up! Just what could Amanda do about it all?

Elizabeth had hoped that she would find sanctuary at lovely Deepdene Manor, but that was impossible for there, not entirely by coincidence, she again encountered Paul Steventon, the man whom she thought she had left in the past. And Paul was a very determined man.

A girl who had worked so hard all her life that she was ignorant of the ways of the world, and a man whose money gave him the freedom to indulge every whim -- what could two such people have in common? Yet, when Christopher was so badly injured in a plane crash that he was given only six months to live, they decided that they would get married. What hope was there for this marriage, even if Christopher did get better?

When Charles Ravenscroft first met Dinah Sherwood, they were both spending a carefree winter sports holiday in the Alps, and his first impression of her was that she was the happiest girl he had ever seen. It was easy to see why - she was in love with Nicky Gisborne. Charles' second impression was that there was something not quite right about the situation. But what, after all, did Charles know about it?

Zenith was very fond of her father, which was why she was more than happy to live in his remote, man's world - the Savage iron mining project in north-west Australia. She was also more than happy at the thought of his marrying again - but it was nice kind Helen she wanted him to marry, not the glamorous but far from nice and kind Carol Quinn that he had actually chosen! So Zenith had more than her share of personal problems to cope with even before Steve Forbuck, her father's new right-hand man, arrived on the scene - Steve, who was too much of a man even for Zenith!

When the haughty Greek millionaire Marc Lillitos invited Kate to visit his Greek island home for a few weeks, in order, he said, to keep his young sister company, Kate was not at all keen. She hadn't taken to Marc at all. But the invitation was also extended to her fiancé Peter, an enthusiastic archaeologist, and for Peter's sake she felt she couldn't refuse. Yet somehow she still felt apprehensive about it all. But what had she to fear? That Marc had designs on her? Of course not - there was the glamorous Marie-Louise to occupy his romantic moments. That she might be attracted to Marc? Surely not - even if she were prepared to break Peter's trust in her. So why didn't she just go, enjoy herself, and see as little of that annoying Greek as possible?