The Bride Said No

WINNER of the RUBY Award - Romantic Book of the Year (Novella Category) from Romance Writers of Australia, 2024!

Aidan MacAndrew was late to his own cousin's wedding. Had he known in time, he might have stopped it - he did not know the bride, but he knew Donal, whose own housekeeper would not hire a woman under fifty. For his family's sake he held his peace, until the minister asked the bride whether she would take this man.

She said no.

Emily Mortlake hadn't thought past saying no. She certainly hadn't expected the laird himself to offer her an escape. A housemaid's dress, a boat north, and a housekeeper's post at a half-ruined castle on Raasay, where nobody would think to look for a runaway English heiress. It suits her better than she ever expected. The laird spends his days out among his crofters, which she finds incomprehensible in a man of his rank, and harder and harder not to admire.

Then her stepfather comes for her with a policeman at his shoulder, and Emily hears Aidan say that she is his wife - and hears herself, who has never once been asked what she wanted, agree. In Scotland, that's a legal wedding. Two people, saying so, in front of two witnesses. A happy marriage? That's going to be a little more difficult to navigate.

A sweet, clean and wholesome Regency Highland romance - a bride who refused, a marriage nobody intended, and a half-ruined castle in the Hebrides.