Running into the arms of a handsome, powerful laird will either be her greatest folly or a profitable gamble.
Donovan Ewan Campbell-Ainsley, Earl of Hollandbane, and the current sitting Laird of Lyon Castle is not best pleased when scandal lands on his doorstep in the form of a pretty but long-in-the tooth woman trailing nothing but tittle-tattle. Though he's half-Scottish and lives in London, he spends the summers and autumns at his castle in the Highlands for reasons he wishes to keep to himself. Yet she's in immediate danger, and he's nothing if not a gentleman.
The Honorable Emma Radcliffe is no stranger to scandal, but when she can't go through with her nuptial ceremony, she flees the church. Who cares if it's her third broken engagement? When a friend encourages her to hide in Scotland, that's when the trouble really begins. The moment she lays eyes on the laird, she knows he'll be the perfect man with whom to keep her father, family, and her angry fiancé at bay.
It takes next to no time to hatch a haphazard plan: they'll pretend an engagement. It will silence his family's blather for him to find a bride as well as remove her from immediate responsibility. There's one problem: neither of them expected to actually like the other. As the days go on, the fiction grows larger until desire can no longer be denied, but unless they both come to terms with why they're hiding from the truth, a happily ever after between them will be forever out of reach.
