Colonel Moncrief of the Lowland Scots Fusiliers is in a ticklish situation. One of his captains, Harry Dunnan, refuses to write to his wife, and this has her so worried that she has resorted to writing him to find out if her husband is alive and well. The problem is, Harry Dunnan doesn’t give a rip about his wife (or other men’s wives, or honor, or honesty, or his horse, or other people’s lives—yes, he’s THAT sort of a first husband). In fact, he thrusts her letters into Moncrief’s hands and jokingly tells him to write to her on his behalf.

So Moncrief does. And falls headlong in love with another man’s wife in the process.

Then Dunnan gets his fool self killed. (But of course he does. He’s mean to horsies! And he enjoys killing other people! Such a character cannot be long for the world in a romance novel, particularly if he’s married to the heroine.) Moncrief also finds out that his brother has died, making him the Duke of Lymond. He resigns from the army, returns to Scotland, and though he knows it’s a bad, bad idea, finds himself paying a visit to the widow.

Catherine Dunnan is a royal mess. Harry’s death has sent her into a spiraling depression, and along the way she’s developed quite the laudanum addiction. When Moncrief finally meets her, he finds her condition disturbing, but she’s still attractive, of course—drug-addicted romance novel heroines still look good even if they’re sallow and skeletal. When he returns the next day to deliver a spurious last letter from Harry to help comfort her despair, he finds that she’s deep in the throes of Happy Overdose Land.

He immediately takes steps to shock her back to consciousness, but in the process sees her in nothing more than her nightgown, and even worse, has to undress her. This, of course, is an unacceptable state of matters, so he marries her on the spot.

The problem is, Catherine remembers none of this when she regains consciousness. The overdose, the measures Moncrief took to drag her out of her drug-induced coma, the hasty wedding—none of it. But for better or worse, she’s now the Duchess of Lymond and a newlywed when she hasn’t even reconciled herself to being a widow.

Moncrief’s aloofness and autocratic manner irritate Catherine, while Catherine’s obsession with Harry’s letters chaps Moncrief’s hide. Gradually, though, Catherine learns that the real Harry is quite at odds with the man she had fallen in love with in the letters. Since Harry left for the Lowland Scots Fusiliers a mere month after the wedding, it’s not as if she had much time to get to know Harry’s true character.

Overall, I enjoyed the book quite a bit. The characters were engaging, the plot was interesting, and Ranney’s writing style is quite beautiful, but it lacked that special punch that would’ve made it a keeper. Catherine’s drug addiction was particularly interesting to me. It’s not very often that romance novel heroines are allowed such self-destructive behavior, but her descent into it and her recovery are skimmed over when I wanted more grittiness. And ultimately, in a weird twist provided by an out-of-nowhere suspense side-plot, we find out that her addiction wasn’t necessarily her fault anyway. That struck me as sort of cop-out; I would’ve found Catherine a much more interesting, nuanced character if the dependency (and her insistent denials that she wasn’t an addict) had been all her.

Also, the way Catherine handles the revelation that Moncrief truly was the letter-writer was just a bit too calm for my tastes. This is a situation just begging for some high drama, and Ranney has certainly demonstrated that she can write these sorts of things with a very deft hand—my two favorite books by Ranney (actually, these are two of my favorite romance novels, period), Upon a Wicked Time and My Beloved certainly didn’t shy away from drama—so I’m not sure why Ranney avoided it this time. Like To Love a Scottish Lord, a bit more Sturm und Drang would’ve been appropriate. This is ironic because many romance novels have the exact opposite problem: too much melodrama over small, inconsequential issues.

Catherine’s relative calmness when she finds out the true identity of the letter-writer is a contrast with her far more believable reaction when her former in-laws, Harry’s parents, come for a visit and start making insinuations about her lack of devotion to Harry’s memory while praising his name to the skies at every opportunity. She loses her temper and tells everyone off who has been giving her a hard time, and it’s one of the most entertaining scenes in the story. If Ranney had been able to impart that level of energy, snappiness and depth to the rest of the book, I would’ve liked it even better than I did. As it stands, though, this book is certainly no slouch, and it’s definitely worth a read if you’re a sucker for stories involving unrequited love.