The Gentleman's Quest

Book 2: Regency Lures

by Deborah Simmons

Genres: Romance; Action & Adventure Romance; Clean & Wholesome Romance; Regency Romance

Synopsis

Two for the road…

Kit Marchant’s peace and quiet is upended when Hero Ingram comes looking for a volume of arcane lore he doesn’t want her to find. Someone else is after it, too, and as the two of them head from danger into danger, he’s determined to protect her—even from himself.

Hero is accustomed to doing what she must on her own, and that includes obtaining a valuable book by any means necessary. She knows better than to rely on anyone, but handsome and capable Kit makes her yearn for something else—and a future she can never have.

Release date: September 6, 2025

Publisher: Bennett Street Books

Print pages: 220

Sample

It was then that Hero heard something above the distant thunder and bluster. A glance toward the coach showed it swaying slightly, the coachman appearing to doze upon his crooked perch, but the horses had pricked up their ears. Whirling, Hero looked down the drive that disappeared into the growing gloom, but she could see nothing.

It seemed as though the sound was coming from ahead, and Hero turned around. Surely, the wind was playing tricks upon her, for now all was quiet behind while she could hear a horse approaching from the other direction.

Walking past the coach and the horses that tramped uneasily, she peered into the dimness. For someone weaned on tales of haunts and odd happenings, Hero felt an uncharacteristic trepidation.

And then she saw him.

Drawing in a sharp breath, Hero wondered whether her dormant imagination had conjured the sight, for he seemed to come straight from one of Raven's Gothic novels. A dark figure atop a black horse, cape billowing behind him, he rode as if born of the storm itself, fast and hard and directly toward her.

Hero was so transfixed that she did not even move and might have been trampled had the horse not stopped neatly. The figure dropped just as neatly to the ground, and only then did she feel he might be real, not a product of some unwitting fantasy, for he stepped toward her with a murmur of concern.

For once, Hero could not answer, having been struck dumb by his appearance. Tall and wide-shouldered, his dark hair whipping about a face so handsome that Hero had never seen the like, he seemed the very embodiment of every young girl's dream of rescue.

But Hero was no longer a girl, and she knew that no one could help her unless it was only to give her shelter from the approaching storm. Indeed, he was shouting something to that effect, and before Hero realized what he was about, he had taken her arm. Mounting easily, he reached down to lift her up in front of him.

Hero could only gasp in startlement as she felt her carefully constructed world spinning out of control. Before she could speak, he tucked her against his hard chest, drew one strong arm around her, and kicked the horse into movement.