Book One: Roses in Red Wax

1820 Scotland. Amidst the smoke-choked alleys of Glasgow and the untamed beauty of the Highlands, a spellbinding tale of love and rebellion unfolds.

Jane Stuart has lost everything. Her betrothed, her ancestral castle, and her cherished orchard—her life’s work—have all been ripped away. Now, exiled and adrift in the cold fog of Glasgow, she's numb to the weight of her grief, resigned to a desolate future shrouded in loneliness and grey.

But fate has a different plan.

Percy Sommerbell is a musician, a free spirit who holds nothing but disdain for his industrialist father. But when familial duty forces Percy to travel to Scotland, he’s confronted with a painful truth—a truth that threatens to unravel the very fabric of his carefree existence. His family’s money, the fortune that funds his hedonistic enjoyment of all life’s pleasures, is generated by the suffering of children in his father's mills.

In the midst of Glasgow's smoke and shadows, Percy encounters Jane, a mysterious Highland beauty whose sad eyes and luscious curves promise both distraction from his guilt and inspiration for his music. Against all reason, Jane falls under Percy's spell. But when the mills become the first spark in a violent radical insurgency, their budding connection faces a perilous trial beyond anything they could have imagined.

“A beautifully told story that perfectly blends the sweet, tender emotions of love, the tragic pain of loss, and the healing powers of love and acceptance with the realism of the world.” - Reader review