Part of Mackenzies & McBrides
First published 2012
Juliana St. John's wedding day ends in humiliation. Her groom walks out, the guests stare, and she runs. Fleeing the church, she collides with Elliot McBride, the Scottish man she loved before any of this proper life took hold. A plan forms fast: ask him to marry her, right now, and salvage something from the wreckage of the day. Elliot says yes. But the man who comes back to Scotland is not the one Juliana remembered. Imprisonment has left him wealthy in material terms and broken in almost every other way. People in the Highlands whisper that he has lost his mind entirely. His estate is half a ruin. Juliana throws herself into fixing the manor and, quietly, into trying to reach the person still somewhere inside Elliot. She is determined and clear-eyed about what she is doing. He is grateful and guarded and not sure he deserves any of it. The question the book keeps asking is a plain one: can two people who once cared for each other find their way back when one of them came home carrying damage that does not simply fade?
Genres: romance, historical-fiction, adult, adult-fiction, historical-romance
Vibes: emotional, healing, intimate, melancholic, slow-burn, tender
Tropes: damaged-hero, forced-proximity, second-chance-romance, slow-burn
Setting: Scotland, Highlands
Period: 19th-century
320 pages · Mass Market Paperback · Berkley Sensation
Content warnings: mental-illness