Nineteenth-Century England and Scotland

A long ago curse still rules to this day. Every generation, a lass of the Farlan clan is born with a dagger-shaped birthmark. She is The Bride destined to wed the next MacBraedon chief. If this marriage does not take place by the time she is eighteen, the bride will go mad, no son will be born to a chief who marries another, and both clans will suffer grievous privation. Their lands will be blighted; their wells will run dry; their herds will dwindle to nothing.

Shortly after her eighteenth birthday, memories and dreams begin haunting Catherine Depford, daughter of an enormously wealthy London merchant. The memories are of her mother, "Mad Glynis," who warned six-year-old Catherine of a curse, then jumped out a window to her death. The dreams are of an old crone chanting a rhyme. But lately, a man has entered her sleeping world, a greatly disturbing man who elicits unfamiliar sensations in Catherine's body.

Glynis Farlan became the first Bride to call down the curse when she ran off with an Englishman the night before she was to wed the MacBraedon. In the twenty years since, both clans have suffered greatly; starvation is taking a toll. It is up to the new laird, Gabriel MacBraedon, who became chief upon his uncle's death, to save them all by wedding the Farlan Bride they've found in England.

Catherine hears voices in her head and fears she has inherited her mother's madness. She's determined to find a kindly husband who will care for her and not marry her for her inheritance then lock her away. She thinks she's found him in Lord Kentwood, a son devoted to his mother. How terrifying, then, to see at a ball the very man who comes to her in her dreams.

Catherine's father detests the Scots and has ideas of his own about a husband for his daughter. Gabriel will not have an easy task in wooing Catherine.

The characters in THE NIGHT BEFORE THE WEDDING are a delightful lot...well, the Scottish contingent, anyway, and we must include Catherine in that, in spite of her English half. The MacBraedon also inherits the title Earl of Arneth, but as that was bestowed by an English king, it doesn't outrank a clan laird in Gabriel's opinion, though he's not above using it in London. He's accompanied to London by his impulsive younger brother Patrick; twins Angus and Andrew; and Donald, an older man not at all happy acting as a butler. Donald's real identity came as a surprise I won't spoil.

Suspend all disbelief about curses, and THE NIGHT BEFORE THE WEDDING becomes a highly intriguing adventure. And Catherine's plight elicits all that is sympathetic. And realistic. At first, she's a young girl understandably wrapped in her own concerns, which are many and dire. But so are those of the Farlans and the MacBraedons.

THE NIGHT BEFORE THE WEDDING has an original, well crafted plot, fresh characters, humor, suspense and romance -- and a guaranteed happy and exciting ending!

Jane Bowers