Lady Doctor Wyre — Joely Sue Burkhart

A dangerous technology could conquer the universe. Love could set it free.

Jane Austen Space Opera, Book 1

Charlotte, Duchess of Wyre, once held the Queen's highest confidence and the technological secret that keeps the royal heart beating. Fearful of what atrocities that Britannia might commit with her research, Charlotte turned to the galaxy's most infamous assassin, Lord Sigmund Regret, to stage her own death.

Even without the simplest of luxuries, seven years hiding in the Americus colony is preferable to one day in the Tower of Londinium. Until a bounty hunter's bullet forces her to revive her research. Now the same nanobots that keep the Queen alive also run rampant in Lord Regret's body. Making his yearly Solstice visits increasingly intimate and complicating her courtship with the safe and honorable Sheriff Gilead Masters.

When the Americus colony declares independence, and her humble sheriff makes a shocking confession, Charlotte has had enough. Weary of running, tired of living without tea and silks, she fires a warning shot across Britannia's bow: cease hunting Lady Wyre, or lose the technological power the crown holds so dear.

Her next task isn't so simple. Somehow she must keep the two men she loves alive and prevent them from killing each other.

Warning: Ladies in positions of power, stylish spaceships, BDSM. A menage a trois featuring a duchess on the run, a gentlemanly assassin, and a rough-and-tumble sheriff willing to gun down anyone who gets between him and his lady.