The Laird's Bastard Daughter (The Highland Warlord Series Book 1)

Forced to choose between love and vengeance.

1314, and Scotland is facing a mortal struggle for independence against English tyranny. Stirling Castle is under siege by the Scots, and the English are coming to take it back.

Cormac Buchanan is over six foot of muscle and ferocity, a supreme warrior who has spent years fighting for Robert the Bruce, self-proclaimed King of Scotland. Cormac is battling not only the English invaders but also his clan’s sworn enemy, the Gowans. Having long since built a wall of ice around his heart, he is horrified at his king’s command to bury old enmities and unite with Clan Gowan, through marriage.

Cormac expects his bride to hate him, and he intends to put her aside and forget about her. What he does not expect, is Ravenna Gowan, a bastard, half low-born and fiercely defiant. He just wants her to obey, in bed and out of it, but with looks that would stir any man’s blood, this strange, hard girl wakes a savage need in him. Shame he can’t trust her, nor can he ever look favourably on any Gowan, after what they took from him.

Banished to a convent for the sin of forbidden love, Ravenna Gowan’s life seems over, until an English army heads north and her father has to sacrifice a daughter to the cause of King Robert the Bruce. Ravenna is about to become the glue that binds two clans together by wedding fearsome warrior Cormac Buchanan, but she refuses to be a helpless pawn in men’s power games. For Ravenna, this forced marriage holds no hope of love, nor is it about loyalty or duty - it is all about vengeance.

Can Ravenna survive her rough, angry husband who resents and mistrusts her? Or will her loyalties be tested and her life threatened, as she tries to deny their growing attraction.

The Laird’s Bastard Daughter takes the reader from the moors of the Highlands to castles under siege, and, as Scotland burns, to stand shoulder to shoulder with the Scots rebel army in the battle lines at Bannockburn.

Loyalties are tested, bloody vengeance is sought, and secrets are uncovered, with deadly consequences.

The Laird’s Bastard Daughter is the first of The Highland Warlords Series but can be read as a stand-alone book.

Extract

When she got to the kirk, Ravenna saw before her a group of men standing with her father and she had to force her legs forward.

She could barely look at them. Oh God, which of this pack of hounds was to be her husband? Which of these men, covered in muck from the road, would step forward and claim her, like a prize? Or was she more a burden, for she knew full well that no Buchanan would ever want her?

As she walked forward, a handsome man, young but imposing, looked at her with keen interest. He wasn’t so bad, his expression was kind, and there was admiration in his eyes. Then he stepped aside to reveal a man behind him. This other one was taller, darker and wild-looking.

‘Like a beast’, Coira had said. With a heart sinking to her toes, Ravenna realised this must be Cormac Buchanan, not the one with gentle eyes, but this one, who was looking at her with a face like thunder.