This novella was originally published in a collection entitled "Cherished Love."
Verity Standiford's youthful indiscretion has ruined her. In fact, she's so ruined that even a man who's no man at all abandons her at the altar despite the sizeable fortune her father offered as a dowry. With nothing except constant shame and spinsterhood in her future, Verity agrees to journey with her mother to America and the Kansas Frontier where her younger brother and rakehell Johnnie is supposed to be running a ranch. But when they arrive they find instead that the only thing Johnnie's managed to achieve is a local girl's pregnancy--and he's being forced into marriage at the end of a shotgun by the girl's uncle.
Seth Adamson would be a bitter man if he had the time to indulge in it. The War between the States has not only stripped his family of their wealth, he never achieved the Harvard law degree he expected. Then, his brother died and left him, a single man and former saddle tramp, with two girls, one a wayward teen. It isn't until he meets Verity that hope for a future returns. And when a prairie fire nearly kills them he realizes that he wants no future without this unusual woman.
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