The Bonny Bride
Jenny Lennox didn't believe in love.Not the lasting kind, anyway. Life was too hard for romance to survive for long. Marriage for money was best, she was sure–or had been until she met Harris Chisholm, earnest and penniless yet willing to gamble on life, love–and her!Harris Chisholm was a man of his word.He had promised to deliver Jenny Lennox into the arms of her intended. But could he willingly surrender the woman who'd made him more than himself, the woman who'd become his heart's true friend and partner? "Never!" his soul whispered. "Never…!"
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“Ye won’t be satisfied until ye drive me clean out of my wits with worry!”
Harris traded her glare for glare.
Then, unexpectedly, one corner of his wide, mobile mouth curved into an irresistible grin. “Since we’re each bent on driving the other mad, maybe we ought to find a nice cozy lunatic asylum and settle down.”
“This is nothing to joke about.” The unbidden chuckle that burst out of Jenny belied her words. “We’re at each other all the time. Ye and I never would have made a happy match, even with all the money in the world.”
“Don’t ye believe it, lass,” Harris replied in quiet earnest. A stray ray of rising sun pierced the foliage, burnishing his hair like new copper and lighting the rich warmth of his hazel eyes.
It cost Jenny every crumb of her self-control to keep from bolting straight into his arms….
Dear Reader,
In The Bonny Bride by award-winning author Deborah Hale, a poor young woman sets sail for Nova Scotia from England as a mail-order bride to a wealthy man, yet meets her true soul mate on board the ship. Will she choose love or money? Margaret Moore, who also writes mainstream historicals for Avon Books, returns with A Warrior’s Kiss, a passionate marriage-of-convenience story and the next in her ongoing medieval WARRIOR series. Theresa Michaels’s new Western, Once a Hero, is a gripping and emotion-filled story about a cowboy who rescues a female fugitive and unexpectedly falls in love with her as they go in search of a lost treasure. For readers who enjoy discovering new writers, The Virgin Spring by Golden Heart winner Debra Lee Brown is for you. Here, a Scottish laird finds an amnesiac woman beside a spring and must resist his desire for her, as he believes she is forbidden to him.
Whatever your tastes in reading, you’ll be sure to find a romantic journey back to the past between the covers of a Harlequin Historicals novel. We hope you’ll join us next month, too!
Sincerely,
Tracy Farrell,
Senior Editor
Available from Harlequin Historicals and DEBORAH HALE
Harlequin Historicals
My Lord Protector #452
A Gentleman of Substance #488
The Bonny Bride #503
In memory of my great-great-great-grandparents,
John and Ann Graham, who also fell in love on their way to the Miramichi. And my grandfather, Edwin Graham, who told me their story and many others, igniting my enduring passion for the past.
Contents
Chapter One
“Where can they be? They should be here by now.” For the tenth time in half an hour, Jenny Lennox turned from the quay of Kirkcudbright’s small harbor. Her anxious eye scanned the slate-roofed buildings of the town, searching for some sign of her traveling companions.
“Wist, wist ye now.” Jenny tried to calm herself. “I ken they’ll be here soon enough. Mr. Walker never believed in getting anywhere too soon, and his wife isn’t a hustler, either.”
Indeed, it was a running joke in Dalbeattie that the family should change their surname to Plodder. Still, on this of all days, couldn’t they have come a few minutes early?
“They should be here by now,” she insisted yet again, as though her words were an incantation to conjure the tardy Walkers out of thin air. “The tide’s coming in fast. We’ll have to board before long.”
Salty Atlantic waters swelled into the mouth of the River Nith, covering Kirkcudbright’s muddy tidal flats. A hundred and fifty years earlier, Covenanter girls no older than Jenny had been tied to stakes and drowned by the inexorable Solway tides as punishment for their religious beliefs. To this day the gulls grieved those martyred souls, wheeling and diving in the clear June sky. Their shrill keening struck a mournful counterpoint to the bass dirge of the sea.
Not I, thought Jenny, as she watched a boom of timber being floated ashore from one of the ships moored out in the channel. I’ll not be martyred—tied to some bleak upland croft and slowly drowned by a life of drudgery. From the time she could hold a broom, Jenny had taken on the work of a grown woman. Toiling side by side with her mother, she’d cooked, cleaned, spun, churned, washed and mended. Not to mention minding the ever-increasing tribe of boys her parents had bred in their high box bed. Since her mother’s death, full responsibility for the Lennox household had fallen on Jenny’s slight shoulders. Today might be her only chance to escape.
The lighter barges were already beginning to ferry cargo out to the barque St. Bride. Word had come ashore that her master meant to weigh anchor when the tide shifted, roughly two hours hence. In two hours Jenny would be on her way to the New Brunswick colony and a new, better life. If only the Walkers would hurry up and get here!
