How to Blackmail a Highlander

How to Blackmail a Highlander

The MacGregor Lairds #3

by Michelle McLean

★★★★★

🖤🖤🤍🤍🤍

Lady Alice Chivers is done being controlled by her family. On the run from an arranged marriage, she needs a strong Highlander to escape. Only Philip MacGregor insists on sending her back to her pampered life, so she’ll just have to blackmail him instead. But now they find themselves in an accidental marriage, and soon they’re both playing a role that feels like it was meant to be real. Philip is cautious, in control, and in way over his head with his unexpected wife. She’s intense, spontaneous, and can’t follow an order to save her life. And he might be falling completely in love with her. However, her distractions endanger the lives of those he loves. Now he must somehow undo the damage that has been done, before his friends pay with their lives.

Lady Alice achievers is spoiled and impulsive and she is determined to enjoy her last days of freedom. Doomed to marry the Earl of Woolsmere, an old man who is rumored to have killed his previous three wives when they failed to give him an heir, Alice sees very little hope in her future. That is until a large Highlander pulls her aside and gives her a letter from her dear friend Elizabet. She decides her best chance of escaping her unwanted marriage is to run away with the Highlanders help. She is persistent and blackmails him into taking her to Elizabet in Scotland.

Despite their differences, she felt safe in his company. Protected, cherished even. They might argue with every other breath. And he might not always follow her counsel or wishes. But he listened. She was more than a pretty conquest to parade around. He saw the real her. He might not always approve. But he cared enough to look.

Philip is shocked when he finds Alice in his cabin when he boards the ship! Not only was she able to get away and arrive in Dover, but she also told the captain she was sharing a cabin with her ‘brother!’ Once they land in Scotland, Philip tries to send her back to Scotland, but little does Philip know that she instead stows away in his wagon!

When they reach an inn for the night, Alice is discovered and Philip is forced to keep her with him once again. When she is assaulted in the hallway, Philip comes to her rescue and she declares that Philip is her husband, which in Scotland, declaring you are wed, is just as legal as actually being married!

Finally she is reunited with Elizabet! But the celebration is short lived as Ramses finds them a few days later and a battle ensues. Alice’s impulsiveness and Philip’s concern for making Alice happy, drive them apart, but friends intervene and Philip ends of racing off after the ship she has boarded headed for home.

He loved her. He craved her. His life dulled to a meager pretense of an existence without her. And he was done fighting it.

This was a very enjoyable continuation of the MacGregor saga; I would recommend that you read them in order because there are many references to the previous books. Alice did rub my a little bit with her first attitude and goading Philip, but Philip was also a bit to ‘honorable’ for me! I loved being able to catch up with Sorcha/Malcolm and Elizabet/James.

What are you doing, Philip?” “I’m trying to get the woman I love to admit she loves me, too.” Her heart tripped fast enough it made her suck in a breath. “What did you say?” “I love ye, Alice. I have from the first moment ye looked at me with those laughing, bonnie eyes of yers. Ye blackmailed yer way into my life, and now I find I am yer very willing captive. I want ye with me, as my wife. At my home…well, on my land. I’d have to build ye a home, but I’d build ye one as grand as ye wished if it took me all of my days. Or perhaps at Kirkenroch, or at Glenlyon, or even in London if that’s where ye wish to go.

Steam

Not a lot of steam, it was a slow burn. 

Tropes

Historical Romance, Scotland Romance, Beta Hero, Starchy Hero, Highland Warrior, Virgin Heroine, Aggressive Heroine, Runaway Bride, Enemies to Lovers, Forbidden Romance, Married in Scandal, Class Difference, Forced Proximity