No one ever knew what kind of strays, from animals to weary travelers,
Mary Rose Clayborne would bring home next. Sometimes her four brotherso
runaway slave Adam, ax-pickpocket Douglas, gunslinger Cole, and con man
Travis -- wondered whether her boarding school education did a lick of
good now that their beautiful, impulsive little sister was back in Blue
Belle, Montana.
Of course, everyone in town knew better than to mess with the
Claybornes. The brothers, four of the toughest hombres in the West, had
once been a mismatched gang of street urchins. But they had found an
abandoned baby girl in a New York City alley, named her Mary Rose,
headed West, and raised her to be a lady. Through the years the
Claybornes had become a family, held together by loyalty and love if not
by blood -- when they suddenly faced the crisis that could tear them
apart.
That crisis came to town with Lord Harrison Stanford MacDonald. In his
fine clothes, he looked every inch a dude. Mary Rose figured that if she
didn't interfere, this handsome Englishman would get himself killed, so
she took him home to the Clayborne ranch to ask her brothers to turn him
into a cowboy. She didn't suspect MacDonald was a chameleon, not the
greenhorn he appeared to be. He'd prove fast with a gun, quick with his
fists, and capable of commanding the Claybornes's respect -- if not
their trust. He'd also soon be desperately in love with Mary Rose. She
returned his affection blissfully and wholeheartedly...until MacDonald
revealed a secret that challenged everything she believed about her
love, herself, and her life.
Now Mary Rose's search for identity and meaning would begin, sending her
to England, to the family she lost longago. Her soul hungered for the
freedom of the American West, but she was being drawn away from all she
cared about by the need to know her past...and by her uncertain but
still potent love for MacDonald. Torn between conflicting loyalties,
Mary Rose wasn't sure who she really was, or where she
belonged...questions that could only be answered if she listened to the
truth within her heart.
