My Fair Highlander
Jemma Ramsden is the sister of an English border lord who is grieving over her father’s death. In order to escape her feelings, she rides her horse for hours. One evening, she rides from her brother’s castle at dusk, but she is attacked by a band of rogue English soldiers. Scots border lord Gordon Dwyre, Laird Barras, watches her ride and is intrigued, so asks her brother for permission to court her. He removes her to his castle after he rescues Jemma from her attackers.
And court her he does. While the two people find love, it is not without pitfalls – including several attempts on Jemma’s life. Gordon and Jemma find that affection has no national or religious allegiance.
The background of this romance is the “rough wooing” set on the Scots-English borderlands. The English wish to force the infant Mary, queen of Scots, into a marriage with the dying Henry VIII’s son, Edward. Henry would have been horrified to be called a Protestant. Though he set himself as head of the Church of England, Henry considered himself a good Catholic until his dying day.
The story is intriguing and kept me reading, though the faulty history is annoying. The author might have intended the comments about the English “Protestants” to be yet another barrier between the Scots and the English characters.
