Captive of the Border Lord

Aileen Doyle was on her way to a convent when the reivers took her cart. She is twenty-two, a cartographer's daughter, and has already decided that she will not spend the winter as anyone's guest. Cormac Ruthven is forty-seven. He has raided the same six valleys for thirty years and has never taken a woman before. He has no plan for her. He cannot release her. So she stays. She draws his valley from the window, learns his household's silences, and discovers that the most dangerous thing in the tower is the map she is making. In spring, he sets her free. She doesn't go. A slow-burn age gap captive romance set on the Scottish border, where the winter is long and the bride is the one who holds the keys.