May Queen

Isabelle Mercier has always been seen as weak-too young, too pretty and too innocent to be told the truth about what happened to her family in France. As an act of rebellion, she shuns the mores imposed on her gender by the English upper class and leads a life away from the people and the house that sheltered her in her youth. But as the years of her life slowly trickle away, the fear of aging and dying alone grew in her mind. Figuring it was already too late for her to catch any gentleman's attention-if not affection-she dares approach the one person who promised to aid her.

Francis Thornton has been sailing the seas of the Atlantic and Mediterranean most of his life, with a sterling reputation that was hard-earned, but no storm has ever left him stunned beyond belief as the azure-eyed young girl whom he had rescued from her family's enemies. Now a vice admiral for His Majesty's Royal Navy, he does not have the time or physical will to finally settle down as his family desires him to. He helped French émigrés escape the Revolution-that was his expertise. Yet when Lady Mercier recklessly asks for a specific skill he supposedly possesses to help her in an insane plan, the notoriously indomitable lord of the sea suddenly finds himself-and his heart-in a quandary.