A Duke of the Queen’s Choosing : Ravensglen, Season 1

When Isla MacRae runs into a Highland storm to save a stranger dying on the moor road, she has no notion that the old woman she carries home to her father’s cottage is Margaret, Queen of Scots — traveling in secret, and about to change the course of Isla’s life entirely. Grateful beyond measure, and utterly certain of her own instincts, the Queen makes a decision no one asks her to make: Isla MacRae, herbalist’s daughter, debtor’s heir, will marry her son. There’s only one problem. The Duke of Ravensglen doesn’t want a wife. Alasdair Kerr has spent three years turning grief into armor, and he has no intention of letting a stranger — however brave, however plainly, infuriatingly honest — anywhere near the parts of himself he’s worked so hard to wall off. Isla, for her part, wants nothing to do with being anyone’s political convenience, crown or no crown. But a corrupt laird, a mounting debt, and a mother’s unshakable will leave neither of them much choice. What begins as a marriage neither wanted becomes something else entirely — a slow, reluctant unraveling of walls three years in the building, tested by scandal, danger, and a court that never stops watching. Before Isla can become the duchess Margaret always believed she could be, she’ll have to win over a kingdom that doubts her — and a duke who has forgotten how to let himself want anything at all. A story of storms and second chances, crowns earned rather than born, and the particular courage it takes to love someone who has learned that loving hurts.