It's Getting Scot in Here
Suzanne EnochWild Wicked Highlanders, book 1
St. Martin's Paperbacks
February 26, 2019
HAPPILY-EVER-AFTER
London socialite Amelia-Rose Baxter is nobody’s fool. Her parents may want her to catch a title, but she
will never change who she is for the promise of marriage. Her husband will be a man who can
appreciate her sharp mind as well as her body. A sophisticated man who loves life in London. A man
who considers her his equal—and won’t try to tame her wild heart...
IN THE HIGHLANDS
Rough, rugged Highlander Niall MacTaggert and his brothers know the rules: the eldest must marry or
lose the ancestral estate, period. But Niall’s eldest brother just isn’t interested in the lady his mother
selected. Is it because Amelia-Rose is just too. . . Free-spirited? Yes. Brazen? Aye. Surely Niall can find a
way to soften up the whip-smart lass and make her the perfect match for his brother for the sake of the
family.
JUST GOT A WHOLE LOT HOTTER.
Instead it’s Niall who tempts Amelia-Rose, despite her reservations about barbarian Highlanders. Niall
finds the lass nigh irresistible as well, but he won’t make the mistake his father did in marrying an
Englishwoman who doesn’t like the Highlands. Does he have what it takes to win her heart? There is
only one way to find out...
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Review
I kind of wanted to shake Amelia-Rose several time in this book. I had to keep reminding myself that she is a VERY sheltered nineteen year old and that I should have patience with her... BUT OH MY GOSH, I've gotten so used to strong and sassy women in my historical romances, and it was difficult to watch Amelia-Rose struggle so hard to figure out who she is. Still, she goes through a lot of personal growth throughout this book, which is something I love to see in a romance novel, so I will give her that. She also has a great spirit and inner fire, she just keeps trying to squash it and hide her light under a bushel to please her family and be a dutiful daughter (boooooorinnnnnng!)Niall, I love. I love that he fills the middle-child peacemaker role despite being the youngest of three brothers, though I guess if you count his (absent) baby sister he is technically a middle child? He's so clever and charming, and I love how patient he is with Amelia-Rose while she sorts herself out, and he lets her - no, encourages her to be herself and seek her happiness. He's also ready to meet her halfway, which is amazing, and he doesn't try to make decisions for her or decide what's best for her. He listens to her, then believes she means what she says. SWOON. Total consent boner .
I'm excited to read Aden's book, but not sure how Suzanne Enoch is going to make me like Coll... Also, this one was a little more brogue-y than the last Highlander romance I read by Enoch, which I didn't always love, but it wasn't so heavy as to be too distracting.
This is the first book in the Wild Wicked Highlanders series, and can be read as a stand alone.
Excerpt
Prologue
Once upon a time—in May
1785, to be exact—Angus MacTaggert, Earl Aldriss, traveled from the middle of
the Scottish Highlands to London in search of a wealthy bride to save his
well-loved but crumbling estate. Aldriss Park had been in the MacTaggert family
since the time of Henry VIII, when Domhnall MacTaggert, despite being Catholic
and married, declared publicly that Henry should be able to wed as many lasses
as he wanted until one of them got him a son. Aldriss Park was the newly minted
earl’s reward for his support and understanding.
For the next two
hundred years Aldriss thrived, until the weight of poor harvests, the
ever-intruding, rule-making Sassenach, and the MacTaggerts’ own fondness for
drinking, gambling, and wild investments (including an early bicycle design
wherein the driver sat between two wheels; sadly, it had no braking mechanism
and after a series of accidents nearly began a war within the MacTaggerts’ clan
Ross) began to sink it into disrepair.
When Angus inherited
the title in 1783, he realized the old castle needed far more than a fresh coat
of paint to keep it from both physical collapse and bankruptcy. And so he
determined to go down among the enemy Sassenach and win himself a wealthy
bride. The English had made enough trouble for him and his over the centuries, so
they could bloody well help him set things right.
On his second day in
London, he met the stunning Francesca Oswell, the only offspring of James and
Mary Oswell, Viscount and Viscountess of Hornford—who had more money than Midas
and a bevy of very fine solicitors—at a masked ball where he dressed as a bull,
and she as a swan. Despite the misgivings of nearly every-one in Mayfair, Angus
and Francesca immediately fell madly in love, and married with a special
license ten days later.
A week after that,
Angus took Francesca back to Aldriss Park and the Highlands, where she found
very little civilization, a great many sheep, and a husband who preferred
brawling to dancing, and he discovered that her father’s solicitors had
arranged to keep the Oswell family money in Francesca’s hands. This made for
some very spectacular arguments, because there is nothing more combustible in
the world than an impoverished Highlands laird in disagreement with an
independently wealthy English lady about his own ancestral lands.
Over the next thirteen
turbulent years the estate prospered, and Francesca gave Angus three sons—Coll,
Aden, and Niall—and with each one became more concerned that this was not a
life for any civilized person. She wanted to bring the boys back to London for
proper educations and to live proper lives, but Angus refused, stating that what
had been good enough for him would be good enough for his lads.
When a fourth child, a
daughter, arrived in 1798, Francesca reached her breaking point. No daughter of
hers was going to be raised with an uncivilized accent in a rough country where
she would be ridiculed by proper Society and unfit to marry anyone but a
shepherd or a peat cutter. Angus refused to let his lads go, but he allowed
Francesca to take young Eloise and return to London—on the condition that she
continue providing for the maintenance of the estate.
Francesca reluctantly
agreed, but given that she controlled the purse strings, she had her own
conditions to try to keep
some influence with her wild sons: All three boys must marry before their
sister, they must wed proper Englishwomen, and at least one of them must marry
someone of her choosing.
She knew Angus would
raise them as he pleased, but they were her children, too, by God, and she
meant to see to it that they had some semblance of propriety in their lives—she
was a viscount’s daughter, after all, and certain things would be expected of
her offspring. She refused to allow them to be viewed as unsophisticated wild
men by her London neighbors, and she remained determined to have a presence in
their lives.
To enforce her will,
she convinced (or rather, coerced) Angus to put his signature to the agreement,
which contained this provision: If young Eloise MacTaggert did marry before any
of the boys, Francesca would cut off all funds to the estate. If they were to
insist on defiance, they would have a heavy price to pay for it—one they and
their tenants could not afford.
Angus had no choice but
to agree, and considering that Coll, the oldest, was only twelve at the time of
Francesca’s departure and Eloise was but a wee bairn, he was willing to wager
that he would have time to renegotiate. Angus and Francesca remained married,
but neither would bend enough to visit the other ever again. As far as the lads
were concerned, their mother had abandoned them.
In the spring of 1816
Angus received a letter from Francesca announcing their daughter’s engagement,
and he promptly collapsed. He’d hoped his sons would have found themselves
Scottish lasses by now and shown their mother she couldn’t control their lives
after all, but the lads were defiant and wouldn’t be rushed. Now it appeared to
be too late.
He summoned his sons to
his apparent deathbed and confessed all—Francesca funding the estate, the pernicious
agreement, and their mother’s grasping claws, which he explained was a symptom
of all Englishwomen and their weak, clinging, cloying ways. For the sake of the
property and their tenants the young men must go to London. At once. No sense
even taking time to put him in the ground, much less mourn him, because
Francesca wouldn’t excuse the loss of time, and they needed to marry before
their sister.
The lads—grown men,
now—were not at all happy suddenly to learn about the responsibilities and
rules foisted upon them by a woman they barely remembered. Being wily,
freehearted, and exceptionally handsome men accustomed to doing things their
way and certainly not bowing to the demands of a demented Englishwoman, they
determined to go down to London not to comply, but to outwit their mother and
upend any plans she had for them. And thus, dear reader, begins our story.
Giveaway!
I'm giving away one finished mass market paperback edition of IT’S GETTING SCOT IN HERE. Thanks to St. Martin's Press for providing the prize! Giveaway runs from March 1 - March 14, winner will be notified March 15. US only (sorry guys, publisher's rules!)a Rafflecopter giveaway
A native and current resident of Southern California, Suzanne Enoch loves movies almost as much as she loves books, with a special place in her heart for anything Star Wars. She has written more than forty Regency novels and historical romances, which are regularly found on the New York Times bestseller list.
When she is not busily working on her next book, Suzanne likes to contemplate interesting phenomena, like how the three guppies in her aquarium became 161 guppies in five months.
Some of Suzanne's books include Barefoot In The Dark, It's Getting Scot in Here, Lady Whistledown
Stirkes Back and The Legend of Nimway Hall.
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