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Summary

The Captive Heart follows an English governess who is forced to become the wife of a frontiersman, suspected of murder.

In The Captured Bride a female Indian scout must work with an accused traitor to move a load of gold through dangerous wilderness.

Stats

Genre: Adult historical romance (colonial America)

Series length: The Captive Heart is a standalone. The Captured Bride is part of a large multi-author series, The Daughters of the Mayflower.

Violence: Moderate, including fights and skirmishes that take the lives of characters

Magic/Supernatural: None

Romance: Strong but kept very clean 

Christian/spiritual element: Moderate, overt Christian elements 

Recommendation: Readers who enjoy historical romance with mystery and suspense elements

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Opening Lines: 

My precious Lord; 
My only hope;
My Saviour, how I need You now. 

Eleanor Morgan repeated the words, over and over, scrubbing her fingernails more vigorously with each repetition. Prayer was always better than blood. Perhaps if she focused on the simple child's verse she taught her charges, she wouldn't feel like heaving.

The Captive Heart
by Michelle Griep

The wild American wilderness is no place for an elegant English governess

On the run from a brute of an aristocratic employer, Eleanor Morgan escapes from England to America, the land of the free, for the opportunity to serve an upstanding Charles Town family. But freedom is hard to come by as an indentured servant, and downright impossible when she’s forced to agree to an even harsher contract—marriage to a man she’s never met.

Backwoodsman Samuel Heath doesn’t care what others think of him—but his young daughter’s upbringing matters very much. The life of a trapper in the Carolina backcountry is no life for a small girl, but neither is abandoning his child to another family. He decides it’s time to marry again, but that proves to be an impossible task. Who wants to wed a murderer?
 
Both Samuel and Eleanor are survivors, facing down the threat of war, betrayal, and divided loyalties that could cost them everything, but this time they must face their biggest challenge ever . . .Love.

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Opening Lines: 

"It ain't right. You ain't right."

Mercy Lytton brushed off Captain Matthew Prinn's comment as easily as she rubbed off the dried mud marring her buckskin leggings. Too bad she couldn't so easily rid herself of the bone-deep weariness doggin her steps. matthew had a point--somewhat. Going from a scouting campaign and on to the next mission without a few hours of sleep wasn't right.

The Captured Bride
by Michelle Griep

Mercy Lytton, a scout with keen eyesight raised among the Mohawks, and Elias Dubois, a condemned traitor working both sides of the conflict, must join together to get a shipment of gold safely into British hands.

A War-Torn Countryside Is No Place for a Lady
Mercy Lytton is a lady like none other. Raised amongst the Mohawks, she straddles two cultures, yet each are united in one cause. . .to defeat the French. Born with a rare gift of unusually keen eyesight, she is chosen as a scout to accompany a team of men on a dangerous mission. Yet it is not her life that is threatened. It is her heart. 

Condemned as a traitor, Elias Dubois faces the gallows. At the last minute, he is offered his freedom if he consents to accompany a stolen shipment of French gold to a nearby fort—but he is the one they stole it from in the first place. It turns out that the real thief is the beguiling woman, Mercy Lytton, for she steals his every waking thought.  

Can love survive divided loyalties in a backcountry wilderness?