D LePera

Hugh Philemon Ancaster, seventh Duke of Ripley, will never win prizes for virtue. But even he draws the line at running off with his best friend's bride. All he's trying to do is recapture the slightly inebriated Lady Olympia Hightower and return her to her intended bridegroom. For reasons that elude her, bookish, bespectacled Olympia is supposed to marry a gorgeous rake of a duke. The ton is flabbergasted. Her family's ecstatic. And Olympia? She's climbing out of a window, bent on a getaway.

In the dark days after the death of Richard the Lionhearted, lives and lands would fall into upheaval at the hands of a power-hungry British ruler and his violent minions. One victim of the scourge is innocent Gillian, who is a mere child when the cruel and ambitious Baron Alford slaughters her father and tears her family apart. Alford, determined to recover a jeweled box for the despotic King John, is furious when the precious treasure slips through his fingers - only to be lost for more than a decade.

Her enemy was the only one she could trust... Jacqueline Renold, an English born lady is the sister to the king's executioner. In love with one man and forced to marry another, she feels no different than the prisoners below in the dungeons. After witnessing one too many Scots hung by the noose, she makes a decision that would change her life, she frees the prisoners. Knowing her actions are treason, she flees to Scotland with a bounty on her head...