But the Duke of Bretton and Catriona Burns, both accidental kidnappees, bond quite quickly. She's quite pleased with the prospect of the titled gentlemen, acting fairly scandalously with each of the men in turn, hoping to capture the attention of one of them. The most unifying thread of all is Miss Marilla Chisholme, the most beautiful of the group of women and an heiress to boot.
Once everyone is assembled at Finovair Castle, a blizzard traps all of them together, making the passes over which the women's potential rescuers must travel impossible, and guaranteeing that the eight main characters must spend some quality time together.Įach of the three authors takes one couple as her focus, similarly to a novella but each pairing builds on the previous one as well. The men carry off four women (one by accident as she's not an heiress) and because he happened to be sleeping in the carriage they comandeered, the Duke of Bretton as well. So when Oakley and Robin come for their annual winter visit, he and some of his loyal men raid a ball at the not too distant castle of an English lord and abduct some potential brides. But Taran wants both nephews married now. And since he's the one who will inherit Taran's crumbling, desperately in need of a cash infusion castle, he must find an heiress, Byron, the Earl of Oakley, daughter of another of Taran's sisters, just suffered a broken betrothal when he discovered his fiancee in a clinch with her dancing master. Robin, the Comte de Rocheforte was the son of Taran's sister and an impoverished French count so he doesn't have two nickels to rub together. Taran himself has no children so his sisters' sons are his heirs and yet neither one shows any likelihood of getting married and providing heirs of his own any time soon. In this collaborative novel, Taran Ferguson, the Laird of the Fergusons, has hatched a plan to find his two unmarried nephews brides. And in this three part novel, written by three of the biggest and most popular names in romance, it is perfectly charming.
In romances, especially those set in crumbling, freezing castles in Scotland during a blizzard, this is a perfectly valid and heart-warming plot contrivance. But not in romances it's not creepy there. It just tickled me that the right women would be shanghai'd, forced to spend time with one or more initially unappealing men and yet, in the brief time of captivity meet their perfect match. I have always had a soft spot for the literary convention of kidnapped brides ever since I saw the charming movie Seven Brides for Seven Brothers.
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