Author: Penelope Miller

Publisher: iUniverse

Published: 2001

Total Pages: 408

ISBN-13: 0595207839

He is everything she fears… In a last, desperate attempt to escape her horribly abusive stepfather, beautiful and frightened, Angeline Maxwell has no choice but to bend to her aunt’s will and sacrifice herself in marriage to the mysteriously absent Laird Ethan McCutcheon Carroll. Mere hours after the wedding ceremony is concluded by proxy, however, Angeline is informed of her husband’s untimely death. For nigh onto a year, she experiences a peaceful, man-free, fear-free existence that she had never imagined possible. But now her husband is back…and very much alive! She is everything he cannot have… Long-believed-dead, a weary and battered, Ethan McCutcheon Carroll returns home to the highlands of Scotland, intent upon reclaiming his rightful place as Laird of his clan. But home is not the way he left it. Ethan had never imagined that he would be forced to convince his own people that he is indeed alive and not some demon just risen from the devil’s hiding place—nor that this would turn out to be the very least of his problems. By his own fierce vow, he remains a man alone…unwed and without heir. So what is he to do with a wee lass of a wife, who is obviously just as terrified of him, as he is of himself…? Ahhh, but the Queen...what power she holds, to wed a man when he is not even present for the event.