The Cameron sisters were raised in the Ohio Valley by their
father; a trading post owner turned to heavy drinking and
mean disposition after the girls' mother was killed along
with their baby brother during an Indian raid. The three
girls survived the raid by clinging together in hiding and
since that day have vowed to protect each other. While
cleaning the store after their father's death the girls find
a secret drawer with 800 British pounds.
They decide that one of the girls will go to London and
marry a member of the ton with a title and money and then
help the other two sisters marry well; after all they are
the granddaughters of an Earl. Charlotte, the oldest sister
decides that Miranda the middle, most beautiful, sister
should go since she will have the best chance. Miranda
wants them all to go to London but there is not enough
money. The girls use part of the money to hire a guide to
help launch Miranda into society. Lady Overstreet is more
than willing to help, since she is impoverished and will do
just about anything to return to London and society.
When the ship enters a port in order to take on supplies,
Lady Overstreet decrees that Miranda should practice some of
the lessons she has been teaching her with the local
aristocrats. From the deck of his ship, the Captain of the
Warrior spots Miranda. When Miranda turns and sees Alex
Haddon coming toward her, she sees the first and only man
she has ever loved.
Captain Alex Haddon is the renegade son of a disgraced
British general. His father married Alex's Shawnee mother
and then took his son and returned to England. There he met
a French woman and gave up everything including his son to
go to France to live with her. Alex was then sent back to
live with his mother's people as an Indian in the Ohio
Valley. As fate would have it, he meets 15 year old Miranda
and the two fall in love. They perform a Shawnee wedding
ceremony but there is no one who witnesses it. Alex goes to
Miranda's father to ask for her hand in marriage so that
Miranda can have a white man's ceremony. He has Alex tied
to a tree and horsewhipped. There is nothing Miranda or her
sisters can do to prevent the beating, but when their father
goes to the tavern to quench his thirst the girls free Alex
and take him to the river for his people to find. After his
recovery Alex ask Miranda to leave with him. She begs Alex
to live as a white man so that they can be together, she
doesn't want to leave her sister, and Alex refuses.
Now ten years later the two lovers see each other for the
first time and they both know the feelings are still there
and just as strong. Yet again Miranda feels she cannot let
her sisters down; they have suffered so much from her
earlier indiscretion. They have lived as outcasts with no
men ever trying to court them and Charlotte's betrothed
jilting her all because of her relationship with Alex. Now
Miranda has the means to help them but in order to do this
she must again give up her one true love.
Ms. Maxwell has written a true love story. This book starts
off with the main conflict and never slows down. I don't
like to read a book where you have to read four or five
chapter before you realize who the main characters are and
what the story is about. She catches your interest from
word one. She has also put enough humor to keep the book
from being a complete tear jerker, especially in the scene
when Miranda lets Alex know how strong her arm is from
chopping wood. Alex's dry wit will make you chuckle.
This is the first book in Cathy Maxwell's new trilogy. The
second book The Price of Betrayal (Charlotte's story) will
be out in 2006 and I can't wait. It will feature the Duke
of Colster; Charlotte is just the person to give him his
comeuppance.
The granddaughter of an earl, Miranda Cameron has had an
unconventional upbringing. However, for the sake of her
sisters, she must charm the ton, and make a spectacular
match. Miranda believes she is prepared for the task ahead
-- until she is confronted by Alex Haddon, the renegade son
of a British general.
Alex has tempted fate to raise himself from a man scorned
by
society to one with vast wealth and influence. There had
been a time when Miranda meant everything to him. His love
for her had almost cost him his life. Now, all he sees is a
woman willing to sell herself to the highest bidder --
provided the bidder isn't him.
What man can resist such a challenge?
Miranda enchants London's powerful noblemen, even as she
keeps her past a secret. Alex is not immune to her
intoxicating sensuality. Scandal, and far worse, is what
she
must risk for another chance with the man she still
loves...
no matter the price.
Excerpt
Chapter One
1805
"No, I absolutely will not do it," Miranda Cameron told
her sisters, Charlotte and Constance. "I don't want to
marry." She attempted to yank her arm away from her oldest
sister's hold and hurry out the door, but Charlotte held
fast.
They stood in the entrance hallway of Beardsley's, a
popular but respectable inn located close to the New York
docks, where Charlotte had caught Miranda before she could
bolt out the door. A group of men had to squeeze by them
on their way to the taproom. Aware of the curious glances,
Charlotte pulled Miranda into a corner, so as to shield
their conversation from prying ears, and replied, "You
must go. If you don't, we shall never amount to anything.
We are the granddaughters of an earl -- "
"One who drank and gambled his fortune away," Miranda shot
back.
"As if the rest of them don't?" Charlotte said.
"How would you know?" Miranda challenged. "We've lived our
lives in the Ohio Valley, not London. This is the farthest
either of us has ever traveled."
"I listen to everything I can about the nobility," her
sister answered. "I ask questions and remember everything
Mother told us—"
"I remember, too," Miranda said, stung by the implied
accusation that she could have forgotten their mother in
any way.
"Then you know what she wanted for us," Charlotte
said. "Constance was too young when she died, but you
know."
Miranda did know. Their mother, who had died in an Indian
raid fifteen years earlier, had never wanted them to
forget they had the blood of the Conqueror flowing through
their veins.
"She'd have wanted us to return to London, to find proper
husbands," Charlotte said.
"But I thought Mother and Papa were a love match? I
thought they were happy," Constance said. She was
nineteen, the youngest. Charlotte and Miranda were twenty-
six and twenty-five, and only ten months apart.
"They were," Miranda answered. "Although she didn't have
many choices when our grand-father died. Being an earl's
daughter with no family, no relatives, not even a farthing
to her name didn't give her many choices. Everything had
to be sold around her to meet his debts. She was lucky to
have met Father."
"Who promised to make her wealthy," Charlotte said with a
trace of bitterness.
"I don't think she was unhappy," Miranda argued. "They
loved each other. I just don't believe she realized how
hard it would be over here."
"Or how violent," Charlotte tacked on, reminding them all
why they had chosen to leave the frontier. There had been
another Indian uprising. A family no more than two miles
from the Cameron Trading Post had been massacred. Having
seen their mother and baby brother die the same way, all
three girls were ready to begin new lives. They had
nothing holding them there.
Charlotte gave Miranda's arm a squeeze. "We are the
granddaughters of an earl. We have a chance to return to
England, and I want it, Miranda. I want it for all of us."
"Then let us take the money and go," she countered,
referring to eight hundred pounds they'd found hidden in a
secret drawer under the counter where their father had
counted pelts. "That's what we had planned to do."
The money had been a complete surprise. Their father, who
had died suddenly the month before, had always pleaded
poverty. They'd not expected to inherit anything and had
thought themselves worse off than their mother had once
been. When a German had offered to buy their small stake
in the Cameron Trading Post, the girls had gladly accepted
the pittance he'd been willing to pay, especially after
the deaths of the William and Nell McBride and their
children.
Then fortune finally smiled on the Camerons. While
cleaning the one-room trading post for the new owner,
Constance had accidentally hit her head on the counter
edge when she rose from the floor. A secret drawer had
slid open, and inside was eight hundred British pounds.
Where it had come from, they didn't know. Perhaps their
mother had had a dowry, and their parents had saved it for
them. Considering the bitter man their father had become,
it wasn't likely. However, this money gave them
possibilities.
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