The Secret Gift

While researching her mother's ancestry in Scotland, Libby Hutchinson is stunned when her mother's crystal stone leads her to a remote Scottish village and into the arms of Graeme Mackenzie, a gorgeous laird plagued by droves of scheming females who want his money and his hand in marriage. Original.

Graeme, the Viscount Kintail and the Marquess of Waltham, doesn't trust women who resort to all sorts of trickery to make his acquaintance. Manhattan bookseller Libby's life is transformed when she inherits her mother's Victorian house and an unusual crystal necklace accompanied by a photograph of a man labeled only "Wrath Village, Scotland." Determined to discover her mother's secret, Libby goes to Scotland, where Graeme is ensconced in a remote Highland castle to escape wife wanna-bes and the paparazzi. He isn't thrilled when Libby gets lost and ends up on his property, and he shoos her away with his shotgun. But when Libby discovers that the castle holds the key to her past, there's no keeping her away. Although hundreds of years separate Reding's latest characters from their predecessors in the first two books of her Highland Heroes trilogy--The Pretender (2002) and The Adventurer [BKL O 15 02]--Reding similarly endows this new generation with courage, resourcefulness, and determination in a deliciously detailed story of an inheritance lost and found. Shelley Mosley
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