title: All a Woman Wants (Signet Historical Romance)
author:  Patricia Rice 
description: When Victorian spinster Bea Cavendish crosses paths with burly Lachlan Warwick MacTavish, a coarse Scottish-American seafarer, Bea realizes that he may be just the man who can teach her about estate management. Having lost her domineering father recently, dependent and unworldly Bea feels ill equipped to run the heavily mortgaged estate she's inherited. Fortunately, Mac has a good business mind, and he's willing to assist Bea if she agrees to find a nanny for his four-year-old nephew and infant niece. What Mac is reluctant to tell Bea is that he has kidnapped the children from their dissolute father, the Viscount Simmons, after learning of his sister's death and the Viscount's neglect. An unlikely yet heartening romance blooms between Bea and Mac as they work to repair her estate. The only factor that threatens to keep them apart is Mac's determination to sail back to America with his two charges. Rice (Nobody's Angel) does a fine job developing complex, sympathetic characters, but her plodding narrative lacks march. Readers may not have Bea's patience to slog through the details of estate management in order to reach the novel's moving but inevitable conclusion
zlib_text: All a Woman Wants
  
  Patricia Rice
  
  ![](Images/image00188.jpeg)  
  [www.bookviewcafe.com](http://www.bookviewcafe.com/)
  
  Book View Café Edition  
  February 12, 2013  
  ISBN: 978-1-61138-242-6  
  Copyright © 1992 Rice Enterprises
  
  Dedication
  
  For Ellen, who endures a writer’s neuroses with grace and patience, and
  succeeds where others would have smashed pumpkins (or other crushable
  matter!).
  
  And as always, to Mary Jo and Connie and everyone else who has listened to
  screams of frustration and made sense out of the incomprehensible, you’re my
  sanity. Thank you.
  
  And forever, to my husband and children, for you are my heart, and I love you.
  
  Prologue
  
  “Not that way, ye keelhaulin’ son of a sea serpent!” Lachlan Warwick MacTavish
  shouted, jumping to the dock ramp to grasp the rigging on a crate of cotton in
  danger of a watery fall. Holding the heavy crate in position, he waited while
  one of the crew hastened to right the ropes and swing it to a safer landing.
  
  Below, his father’s new London busi