A SCOT'S SURRENDER & HIGHLAND HAUNTING, two of the six stories in "The Townsends" series

A SCOT'S SURRENDER
LILY MAXTON (The Townsends #3)
Entangled: Scandalous (non-affiliate Amazon link)
$3.99 Kindle edition, available now

Rating: 4.5* of five

The Publisher Says: "An utterly charming slow-burn romance." - Cat Sebastian, author of The Soldier's Scoundrel

When his brother leaves him in charge of Llynmore Castle, Robert Townsend is determined to make everything go smoothly. What does it matter if he's inexplicably drawn to Ian Cameron, the estate’s stoic steward? Robert is sure he can ignore the way the Highlander's apparent dislike of him gets under his skin. They'll muddle along just fine so long as they avoid one another. An excellent plan…until a fire forces Ian into the castle—and Robert's personal space.

Ian Cameron has worked for everything he owns, unlike spoiled Robert Townsend. And he may not have friends, but he has the Highlands and the stars, and what more could he really need? But when a guest's stolen possession appears in his room, he doesn't have much choice but to admit to the handsome and aggravatingly charming Townsend brother that he needs help. To solve this mystery, they'll have to put aside their differences. And as Ian learns more about Robert, he'll have to guard his heart…or it may be the next thing stolen.

Each book in the Townsends series is STANDALONE:
* Enchanting the Earl
* The Rogue's Conquest
* A Scot's Surrender

My Review: First, read this:

“You’re too kind,” Ian said eventually. Most people would mean that statement as a compliment. Ian didn’t.

Townsend huffed. “I’m too kind?”

“People take advantage of kindness.”

He smiled suddenly. “I’m kind but crafty…the perfect combination. Don’t worry on my account.”
–and–
The Highlander was, in true contrary fashion, one of those people who were at their best in the morning—his face was alert, gray eyes sharp and observant. He’d probably bounded out of bed at dawn and wrestled a few sheep.
–and–
Robert didn’t dislike cats, but he’d always been more of a dog person himself—one knew where one stood with a dog. They didn’t stare at a person with those unreadable, impassive eyes. With cats, it was impossible to tell if they liked you or if they might be plotting your murder.

Here's what you need to know: These aren't striplings falling in love for the first time, these are men whose different stations in life and similar sexual natures keep them from being best friends immediately, from trusting each other's honesty until the bitter end, and from rushing into any kind of relationship at all. So: slow burn, learning to love, and enough baggage for the whole of steerage on the Titanic.

The set-up in the synopsis above gets you most of the way to the plot. There are details you'll enjoy discovering on your own...the focus of the book is less on the action than on the actors and their motivations, their learning, their expanding circle of trust and respect for each other. Ian, as a very senior servant, shouldn't take a snarky 'tude with his boss's little brother but he is righteously annoyed that there's a spoiled useless idler set in nominal authority over his omnicompetent self. Robert is a pleaser, a fixer, and wants only to make sure everything goes smoothly and everyone is happy as larry or it is All His Fault.

The hijinks that ensue are the result of some truly shady events that occur when strangers call. The men are suddenly perforce a team, and they're amazed at how soon they come to like it:

He could admit Robert Townsend was as handsome as the devil, and he had a voice to match, deep and dark and smooth and curled with smoke at the edges.
–and–
And thus, it was official—he was ridiculously besotted. He would have to be to think of poetry at odd, random moments, and it was always Elizabethan poetry, too.

These are men whose lives haven't led them to trust things that come easy. Ian's family...well, least said, soonest mended, and if I told you then you'd refuse to read the book, and really you need to. We are all as Heaven made us, as that Confucian ikon Dee Goong An says in one of Robert van Gulik's lovely stories about him; the judge refers to that series' only encounter with a gay couple. That was daring stuff in the 1950s, and it reflected accurately how Confucian thought deals with men who love men: Weird, but hardly their fault. If only that was the attitude of certain Georgian Scots.

Robert's not...well, he's a luckier if less assured soul than Ian is. He's just about never been honest with anyone, as a means of protecting his inner squishy bits. He writes successful silly mystery stories and makes a decent living at it. You can imagine what the hearty Scot thinks of Temperament, nor is Robert inclined to make allowances for Scottish Temper:

It was a battlefield…of parchment and quills and books. Ian couldn’t even see the actual desk. Everywhere, sheets of foolscap covered in a slanted scrawl were stacked or strewn about. Books, both open and closed, took up any space the foolscap had left. And teetering precariously close to a corner was an intricate silver-topped inkwell and an open cedarwood box that contained no fewer than ten quills.
–and–
“I’m not inclined to stand around while you hurl verbal abuse at me. If I did something that bothered you, find those words you keep buried in the depths of your prickly soul and tell me. Until then, we have more important matters at hand.”

But they are learning...learning to love, to trust, and to be as vulnerable as those activites (properly done) require a man to be.

Ian pulled him like the tide, inexorably, out into the night.
–and–
Why did touching Robert make him feel like he’d flown too close to the sun and somehow emerged on fire but alive?

They're in a category romance. They're gettin' a Happily Ever After. And it makes me very happy that I read this entry in the series, allowed myself to be steered gently by the story's currents, when I reached port:

Love was a force to be reckoned with. It wasn’t a thing to be taken lightly, or toyed with, or revoked at a whim. Its presence was felt, and its dearth. Always, always, the lack of it was missed. Love made all the difference in the world.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

HIGHLAND HAUNTING
LILY MAXTON (The Townsends #3.5)
Entangled: Scandalous (non-affiliate Amazon link)
99¢ Kindle edition, available now

Rating: 4.5* of five

The Publisher Says: For the past few months, Ian Cameron and Robert Townsend have been settling into their new life together, but when a series of odd events occur at Llynmore Castle, Ian begins to suspect that he's being haunted. The question is, is the spirit malevolent or benevolent? Does it want to harm him or warn him of something to come?

As Halloween draws closer, the ghost becomes stronger. Ian and Robert will have to trust each other and trust themselves to find the answers they need before it's too late.

Highland Haunting is 16,000 words and features the main characters from A Scot's Surrender

My Review: First, read this:

“All right. I’m sorry. I didn’t think you were superstitious.”

“I’m not.”

“But you believe in ghosts? You think you saw one?”

Ian nodded, as if there was nothing wrong with the logic of not being superstitious but believing in otherworldly beings.

That is, right there, the entire purpose of this story. Set at Halloween, Ian's culture's night when the veil between the living and the dead is at its thinnest and most permeable but when Robert's culture is beginning its steep downgrade of that into a brummagem and tawdry schlockfest like we have now. That means...this being a Scottish castle at the beginning of Winter...Gothic Atmosphere for days! And Author Maxton's going to make every allowable use of it, too. A ghostie with a tragic love story between ancestors, or bygone relatives anyway, of Ian Cameron and Robert Townsend; an old blood debt that must be paid; and the fact of these men's love, their sexual and spiritual wholeness in relationship to each other, being the medium to pay, repay, and pay forward the bond they each cherish and maintain.

“She was in this room. She was locked in, I think… She kept telling me to let her out.” He knew how strange it sounded. He also knew it was true.

Ian moved toward him, touched his waist. “Are ye all right?”

Robert wanted to sink into the touch, but he didn’t let himself. It wasn’t because Georgina was there, it was because he hadn’t believed Ian at first. Ian must have felt this way, too, this bone-deep unease, this sense of wrongness, and Robert had laughed.
–and–
“There’s a difference between coddling and cuddling.”

“This isna cuddling.”

“Then what is it?”

“Necessary. Like breathing.”

Ian had once accused Robert of saying things Ian didn’t know how to protect himself against. Now that they’d been together longer, it was the other way around. Ian’s words were simple, but they were pointed, and they cut—a knife through flesh and blood and bone—straight to the heart.

This short work does more in its under-seventy pages than many a modernist novel does in hundreds. The fact is that being in love with and lusting after someone is not enough to buid a solid, lasting relationship on; birthday parties aren't the models for quotidian living. Robert and Ian are aware of that now, where before they were besotted by the pretty wrapping paper and the party clothes. Having faced a brace of ghosts down and paid a spirit-debt to their dead foreebears together, and having done so against some pretty steep odds, they are on a firm footing that bids fair to hold them up while they build their lover's retreat from the world into a roomy, finely furnished, comfortable, and durable home for their ever-beating hearts.

It was an odd thing, to be secure in someone else’s love. To have that space, that feeling, be inviolable. It was changeable maybe, because nothing remained unchanged, but it would grow and change with them. Its roots were deep, like that centuries old hawthorn tree, profound and unshakable, no matter how much it weathered. That was simply who Robert was, and who they were, together.