#7.5 in the Highland Guard series and a novella, so this is short, and some back history/characterisations (especially those of the secondary characters) are short as a result. I have not read any other books in this series so dont know how this stacks up against any of the others.

There is some frank sexual talk, especially at the beginning of the book, so not for those who are of a sensitive nature! After being away fighting, James returns to retake the castle, and finds Joanna at their usual meeting place. Things come to a head, when Joanna realises that the others were right - James will never marry her, as his ambition will make him marry someone of higher status and with money. However, he assumes that she's willing to be his mistress, and cannot understand that she expected more, especially after losing her virginity to him. Little does he know, she is also pregnant with his child.

James takes it hard that he cant have his cake AND eat it - after all Joanna loves him and want sex with him, right? So why cant this work? Joanna cuts off all contact, and James goes back out to fight for Robert Bruce, spending months away from home. When he is offered what he thought he wanted - the hand of Bruce's youngest daughter in marriage - he realises he has to make a decision. He is shocked to find out just what Joanna has been going through as a result of his actions, and starts trying to make amends.

This is a novella, so things do happen rather brusquely so I dont know if things could have been done better/differently if done as a book (would James have done more grovelling for instance?). Suitably distracting afternoon read, but not sure I'd be actively seeking out others in this series (though if one fell my way I wouldnt say no) ( )

#7.5 in the Highland Guard series and a novella, so this is short, and some back history/characterisations (especially those of the secondary characters) are short as a result. I have not read any other books in this series so dont know how this stacks up against any of the others.

There is some frank sexual talk, especially at the beginning of the book, so not for those who are of a sensitive nature! After being away fighting, James returns to retake the castle, and finds Joanna at their usual meeting place. Things come to a head, when Joanna realises that the others were right - James will never marry her, as his ambition will make him marry someone of higher status and with money. However, he assumes that she's willing to be his mistress, and cannot understand that she expected more, especially after losing her virginity to him. Little does he know, she is also pregnant with his child.

James takes it hard that he cant have his cake AND eat it - after all Joanna loves him and want sex with him, right? So why cant this work? Joanna cuts off all contact, and James goes back out to fight for Robert Bruce, spending months away from home. When he is offered what he thought he wanted - the hand of Bruce's youngest daughter in marriage - he realises he has to make a decision. He is shocked to find out just what Joanna has been going through as a result of his actions, and starts trying to make amends.

This is a novella, so things do happen rather brusquely so I dont know if things could have been done better/differently if done as a book (would James have done more grovelling for instance?). Suitably distracting afternoon read, but not sure I'd be actively seeking out others in this series (though if one fell my way I wouldnt say no) ( )

The Knight – Highland Guard #7.5

I read this book after I read The Arrow which was the 9th book in the series. I didn’t realize I’d missed a book and when I did, I wasn’t going to read it but my Highland Guard withdrawals proved to be too much so I gave in and read it.

It was more of a novella which you probably already figured from the number of the book, 7.5. Although it was short, it packed a punch….A punch like what I wanted to do to the protagonist many times throughout the book. He was so arrogant and misogynistic! Ugh!!!!

Most of the books of the Highland Guard are about the individual warriors in Robert Bruce’s secret Highland Guard, an elite group of warriors who go on missions for Bruce, but this book was about one of the men who fought alongside Robert Bruce and before him, William Wallace.
James Douglas known as the Black Douglas will do just about anything to elevate himself and his family and to restore his clan to where they were before the English destroyed them. He is bound by honor and duty and won’t let anything get in the way of that not even the love he has for his childhood sweetheart. He hates the English with a passion and wants to see them defeated.

Joanna Dicson has stood behind James Douglas and loved him since they were children. She knows that they were always meant to be together. He’s told her that he wants to build her a castle and they’d be together forever. Shortly after James made love to her and took her maidenhood, he was called away to war where he spends most of his time fighting for Robert Bruce. He’s been gone three months but he is on his way home and she can’t wait to tell him the news about her pregnancy. She meets him up on the hill that has become their spot. He tells her he has only a few minutes with her but somehow they end up making love again. She tries to tell him that they need to move up the wedding date because she is pregnant but before she can tell him that she is pregnant, he stops her and tells her that there will be no wedding. He told her that he though she understood that he has to marry a noblewoman for the good of his clan. She had no time to argue since he was in a hurry and he left in a rush.

Joanna is devastated. She had thought that James meant to marry her but he only wanted to keep her as his leman. A common practice amongst Scottish nobleman was to keep women outside their marriages like mistresses. She would have never slept with him if she would have known. Never the less, she decided to talk to him the next day. He was in a hurry once again. He was called to duty for another mission. They argued and she told him that she would not be his leman. In anger, he told her that if she was giving him an ultimatum, it was over between them. This is where I wanted to slap him…okay, I wanted to punch him. Then to make matters worse, while he is walking away, he tells someone who asked who she was that she was nobody and “only” the marshal’s daughter. At this point, I’m really having a hard time liking James Douglas.

After James leaves, Joanna is so heartbroken and thinking about how she will be ruined, called a whore and her child will be a bastard. She runs off wildly and collides with a horse and rider and careens down a rocky hill.

Meanwhile, James is off fighting. He can’t get away to even go see Joanna to tell her he didn’t mean that they were over. He thinks that she will change her mind and stay with him even though he can’t marry her. She’s always looked at him like he hung the moon. What an arrogant arse!
Months after Joanna’s accident, he’s shocked when he is told about Joanna’s accident and even more shocked when he learns she was pregnant and lost the baby. He has to go find her to make things better but what he doesn’t know is that Joanna has left to get a fresh start.

After her accident, she struggled for her life for weeks. She managed to keep the fact that she was pregnant a secret from everyone but a few people. She is overwhelmed with sorrow but her naiveté about James loving her is gone. In its place is the cold reality that she has to let her love go for him and she has to go on with life. She leaves her home to make a new life.

I thought that Joanna was such a strong character and I felt bad for her but liked that she picked herself up to make a life for herself. I also liked that she would not settle for less than what she deserved.

My favorite part in the book was when James first saw Joanna after the accident and realized she wasn’t going to just accept him back into her life. He was stunned when she wasn’t happy to see him and that she didn’t look at him with love in her eyes anymore. I thought it served him right for how he took her for granted.

I was glad I decided to read the book. It was heartfelt and wreaked havoc on my emotions. Monica McCarty has a way of playing with my emotions. I mean, I’ve read romances for hundreds of years….okay, I’m not quite that old but you get my point…and rarely do my emotions get the better of me. Most romances are predictable and I know where they will end but not Monica’s romances. They make me laugh, then a half hour later, I’m wiping the tears away from my eyes. That is some remarkable writing!

I like her writing so much that I have decided to read her Campbell trilogy.


www.paranormalromanceslut.com ( )

Well, I had read a few of McCarty's books and every one of them had a bratty heroine and I had decided that sadly they just weren't for me despite the interesting time period and otherwise good writing. But James 'the Black' Douglas is my 21st great grandfather, so I was determined to read this novella anyway! (I mean, how many chances do you get to read a steamy romance about your distant ancestor?? =D (Thomas Randolph the hero of her later novella The Rogue is my 22nd great grandfather too, so apparently twice in one series! Score! =D) And then I ended up enjoying it! And, although I may have found his story more compelling regardless, the heroine wasn't a whiny little nitwit either! Yay.

Addition- A lot of readers are bothered by the hero's determination to marry up, despite loving someone socially beneath him. But I think reading so many romances where the prince marries his washerwoman or something has skewed our expectations of history a bit. I liked this heroine, but I really think her assumption that they would marry despite their vastly disparate ranks was an enormous leap, much greater than his assumption that she was aware that he would have to marry for social alliances. From a modern perspective, assuming she understood and planning to keep her as his unofficial spouse is insulting and a dick move, but unlike in later points in history where marrying beneath you only risked social standing, at this point the very lives of your family and clan often depended on it.

I like the author's note at the end about how despite Douglas being a prestigious person of his day, and pedigree being of major importance at the time, weirdly we don't know anything about who he actually married. I really like the idea that it's because he married for love as he does here. ( )

He's so ambitious he can't see how important Jo is in his life.
She does make him work for redemption. ( )