The Laird's Winter
Scotland, 1746. The glen is ruined — cattle driven off to feed a garrison, the barley rotted, the men dead on the moor or hiding in the heather.
Ailsa Crae, a Glasgow grain merchant's widow, holds the debt on the estate. She could turn the attainted laird off his own land. Instead she offers a contract: her grain and her name to carry his people through the winter, his name on the deed so a Lowland widow can hold Highland land. A marriage, plainly transactional. She is very good at contracts.
What she doesn't expect is a man who won't touch her — because the narrow bargain was hers, and he won't take an inch she didn't sell. She spent nine years being wanted for her usefulness. This is the first time she's wanted for simply being there.
Free historical romance short story — Scottish Highlander, the Jacobite Highlands, 1746. Glasgow grain widow Ailsa Crae holds the coin that
