The Captain's Reluctant Bride

Lydia Whitaker has lost everything-her parents, her home, and the life she once knew on a South Carolina plantation. When distant relatives in Charleston take her in, she believes she's been spared the worst... until she learns the truth.

Her guardian has already arranged her future.

Shipped west and married the very day she arrives, Lydia finds herself bound to a stranger whose silence is as unsettling as it is intriguing. Elias Turner is guarded, distant, and determined to keep his past locked away. Wounded by betrayal, Lydia builds walls of her own.

But the past has a way of following.

When Lydia discovers that her new husband once wore a Union officer's coat-and fought a battle not far from her home-grief turns to anger, and suspicion takes root in her heart. How can she trust a man who may have played a role in destroying everything she loved?

Yet as fragments of truth begin to surface, Lydia realizes the line between enemy and protector is not as clear as she once believed.

Caught between loyalty to the past and the fragile promise of a future, Lydia must decide, will she cling to the life she lost... or risk her heart on the man she was never meant to love?