Driven from his ancestral home, Patrick Maclean has spent the last six years as a prisoner aboard a slave ship. Embittered by his family's refusal to pay a ransom to free him, he vows to one day claim his rightful place as the Maclean heir—and exact vengeance on his father and brothers. Finally, when the mutiny he has plotted succeeds, he gets his chance. But he suddenly finds himself saddled with a most unsettlingly beautiful hostage. Juliana Mendoza is on her way to a marriage with an English nobleman when the enslaved oarsmen on her ship mutiny, and she's taken captive by their leader, a powerful Scottish warrior. But as weeks pass, she discovers a reluctant kindness and compassion lurking beneath Patrick's gruff exterior, and her terror gradually turns to smoldering attraction. And yet she has no choice. If she is to save her mother, along with the man she had grown to love, she must marry her intended—even if it destroys her newly awakened heart.