A lady fleeing suitors. A rake fleeing enemies. A Scottish castle that has other plans.

Lady Portia Nichols has made her peace with spinsterhood. London society sees her deafness as a flaw and her beauty as a consolation prize. She has no interest in being launched into another season she didn’t ask for. When her sister insists she have one last adventure before swearing off matrimony, Portia reluctantly agrees: a trip to Scotland to catalog repairs on a distant property without a suitor in sight.

What she gets instead is Henry Peverill.

Henry was once a rake, and he’s been working hard at scrubbing that reputation, with mixed results. A disastrous naval skirmish has left him exposed in the scandal sheets and dismissed by his spymaster, and the only way back into his handler’s graces is to track down the privateers himself. Who are, most conveniently, hiding in the Scottish Highlands. He invites himself along on Portia’s trip, confident he can be indispensable to King, Country, and one very reluctant, very beautiful, traveling companion.

But the journey north quickly becomes a race. Peverill’s enemies know exactly who he is—courtesy of a gleefully overzealous gossip columnist—and soon he and Portia are dodging kidnappers and bounty hunters, blending in with a ramshackle troupe of traveling actors, and assuming false identities just to make it to the castle alive. Forced into one another’s company, their talent for mutual irritation begins to morph into something far more dangerous—especially since they’ve both sworn off love.

Tropes you'll enjoy:

Reformed Rake

Feisty Heroine

Forced Proximity

Banter as Foreplay

Roadtrip Romance

Found Family Antics

He Falls First

One Bed at the Inn

Heroine with Disabilities

The Nichols Sisters Series

Book 1 – Much Ado Over a Duke

Book 2 – A Rake by Any Other Name

Book 3 – A Winter's Vow

Book 4 – The Taming of Miss Beatrice Nichols