Book excerpt: Luke’s Story Eight years ago, Lieutenant Luke Ripton made a hasty wartime marriage-in-name-only tp protect a young girl from a forced union and left her protected in a remote mountain convent. Now, Luke is Lord Ripton, but he has been unable to obtain an annullment. Which leaves him no choice but to collect a wife he doesn’t want. For eight years Isabella has waited like a princesss locked in a tower, dreaming of her handsome, dark-eyed prince. Her dreams are shattered when Luke reveals himself not as a prince, but an autocratic soldier, expecting her unquestioning obedience, which is something Isabella’s firecely independent nature will not tolerate.