Book Review: The Border Lord’s Bride

The Official Blurb

“Duncan Armstrong, laird of Duffdour, has sworn not to wed unless it is to a lass he truly loves. But when he needs a favor from King James, Duncan never expects what he’s forced to pay in return: the taking of a bride he neither loves nor desires.

When Highland heiress Ellen MacArthur’s marriage plans are thwarted by a murder attempt, she has not choice but to beg the king for help. The cost for her urgent plea: to surrender her heritage and become a border lord’s bride.

The price to be paid by two strangers thrown together by fate is higher than they can imagine. And more dangerous than the passion — and betrayal — that could consume them.”

Spoiler Alerts & Trigger Warnings: sexual assault, sexual violence, sodomy, sadism, aggravated sexual battery, sexual abuse

 My book for Season 2 Episode 6, Tit-ular Time Travel, is The Border Lord’s Bride by Bertrice Small. Published in 2007, it was not the Scottish romp I was expecting or hoping for.

Let’s Talk About the Author

Bertrice Small is a New York Times best selling writer of historical and erotic romance novels. She authored over 50 novels in those genres as well as the fantasy/romantasy category. She received numerous awards during her career and her Skye O’Malley books were perhaps her most popular. Those books are actually being turned into a series for Apple TV. This was announced in Spring 2024 but I can’t find any current information on a release date for the show. Small did pass away in 2017 at the age of 77 and her son, Tom, currently handles her estate and carrying on the legacy of her literary works.

I think this blog article by IntrovertReader on sweetsavageflame.com really sums up Small’s writing style – at least as far as I can tell based on the book I just read for the podcast. Quote: “Small’s usual romps where the heroine is captured by some salacious sultan/whoremaster/caliph and enslaved into his harem.” IntrovertReader also comments on Small’s “usual sexcapades” where “the heroine (and hero) cavort with every staff and orifice in plain sight.”

So that pretty much tells you what we’re getting into here. So let’s talk about The Border Lord’s Bride.

My Spiciness Ranking

This is an historical romance with lots of triggering items. There’s an age gap romance (the hero is more than twice the heroine’s age). I’m giving it a Scotch Bonnet ranking in honour of our specialty ranking for our Scottish/Irish themed month. Otherwise, this falls into habanero ranking on our Spicy Scoville Scale. But if we had Ghost Pepper on our scale — which is higher on the chart — I would probably give it that. It fell just short of the Carolina Reaper ranking. And I’m definitely accompanying this one with pepper spray.

If there is a complete opposite to milk and cookies wholesome romance writer, Debbie Macomber, I would say it’s Bertrice Small. I was honestly not prepared for this book – and I’m saying that after having read wild werewolf smut. I almost could not finish it because it was so disturbing to me.

But let’s begin with the main characters.

The Main Characters

Duncan Armstrong is our “hero.” (Though I found myself questioning that designation more than once while reading the book.) A laird and border lord in his mid to late 30s, he is friends with King James. I found Duncan to be an ethical, moral man and loving husband but in terms of a hero … a little lackluster and, frankly, pretty useless when he was needed most.

Ellen MacArthur, our heroine, is a Scottish highland beauty raised by her grandfather. She’s spirited redhead and the true hero of this novel in my personal opinion. Ellen is smart and strong but also elegant and polite and knows when to be reserved in certain situations. I liked her a lot as a character.

The Storyline

The story begins when she is 16. She’s engaged to her cousin, Donald McNab, who her grandfather has named as his heir. This arrangement is considered favorable for Ellen and their clan and the wedding is set for about a year later.

However, some other blood relatives don’t like this plan and want one of their family members – Balgair MacArthur – to marry her so they can claim the lands and inheritance. Ellen and her grandfather refuse to alter their plans to follow what the MacArthurs want. So Balgair and his father make plans to bride nap her to force her into the marriage. Grandpa is no fool, though, and he suspects that’s what will happen. So he sends Ellen to live at court under King James until the time he sends for her. Which will be when he is either nearing the end of his life or it’s time to marry Donald.

Ellen spends a year at court becoming friends with the King and then receives word she needs to return home. The King entrusts her to return home to his friend, Duncan, and Duncan and his men escort Ellen to her highland home. However, they discover Balgair has just murdered both her granddad and Donald. He also used trickery to force her granddad into signing a new will naming him as his heir and instructing Ellen to marry him.

Ellen demands she be allowed the proper mourning time of one year. She will only marry Balgair if King James says she must once Duncan goes back and tells him what’s happened. Balgair says he’s going to give her one month before she must marry him, and swears to Duncan and a priest he won’t force her to marry before the month is over.

So Duncan leaves her there to her own defenses with no protection. Not shockingly at all, Balgair goes to Ellen that very night (after she’s just buried her kin) and attempts to rape her. She very smartly keeps a small knife with her at all times (as her grandfather taught her to) and stabs Balgair repeatedly and leaves him for dead. She immediately chases after Duncan so he can take her back to King James and the King can decide what to do from there.

There’s a lot of time that goes by … about another yearish as Ellen is shuffled around at court and under Duncan’s family’s care. Eventually, the King decides Ellen’s estate and lands are forfeit. He decides to let the MacArthur’s and McNab’s battle out who will get them, and provides her with a small dowery for her “trouble.” Then commands she and Duncan marry.

She’s barely 19 or 20 at this time and he, again, is twice her age. They’re not in love with each other but they have developed a solid friendship. So their relationship and marriage seem promising. They get married and have sex. And when I say sex, I mean a lot of sex. Copious and gratuitous amounts of it. Podcast fans know I like my books a little spicier … but it was actually getting to the point of too much sex. And this is totally one of those books where she’s a virgin with no sexual experience but somehow manages to orgasm twice the first time she has sex with no foreplay. And then, of course, orgasms every time she consummates her relationship with Duncan.

Where Things Head South of the Border

As a border lord, Duncan has some enemies – particularly English opposing border lords. One of these men eventually kidnaps Ellen. And this is where the book went south for me and I almost couldn’t finish reading it. At first, Ellen spends a month in a dungeon, largely ignored. Then she’s brought to a tower where things get nasty. The man who kidnapped her is a sadist, serial rapist and murderer. He drugs and sexually assaults her. And his assaults include aggravated sexual battery, violence and abuse that I can’t even get into because it’s just too much for me.

Ellen keeps waiting for Duncan to come rescue her but months have gone by and he never shows up. So she has to make a decision as to whether she is going to try to escape. But the opportunities for that are very limited. And the only other options are to throw herself from a castle window or succumb to her kidnapper’s nefarious plans.

This is where Ellen perhaps shows some of her greatest cunning and intelligence as she is able to escape. With the help of some monks and other border lords, she eventually makes her way back to Duncan. There are additional challenges that ensue. But, honestly, by this point in the book, I was so disgruntled. And the rest of it made me even angrier and more frustrated. So I’m just going to leave it at that and give my final thoughts on this book.

What I Enjoyed About the Book

I’ll start with things I enjoyed about this book. I liked several of the female characters including Ellen, her sister-in-law Adair, and Duncan’s sister who is a nun. These are all spunky women and I really appreciated them.

I appreciated that Duncan and Ellen’s relationship developed over time and through friendship. They know each other for almost a year before they’re wed and begin their sexual relationship. There was a natural and realistic progression to their growing feelings for each other.

And it’s clear Bertrice Small is a huge history lover and well-researched with the knowledge available at the time she wrote the book. There were lots of history elements – especially regarding King James and historically accurate foods for the time period – greatly interwoven into the story.

However – and now I’ll move into the challenges I had with this book – the constant, lengthy and repetitive historical references regarding King James frankly bogged down the book.

What Challenged Me About the Book

Many stories regarding the King and royal family were repeated ad nauseum and could have been an entirely separate book. Instead of spending paragraphs and pages repeating the same information over and over again, Small could have summarized them or just left them out and not repeated them … repeatedly.

There was the same problem when Ellen was explaining how she escaped the clutches of the kidnapper. Paragraphs and pages were spent with her retelling literally the same story over and over but to different people.

And, in a similar but disturbing vein: her kidnapper’s sadistic fantasies about what he will do when he recaptures Ellen are repeated multiple times in great detail with sodomy and sexual battery. I found it completely disturbing and unnecessary and, frankly, upsetting. Small could have just said something like “He fantasized about what he would do when he found her and how he would torture her” and left it at that. Nope, Small spends several paragraphs and pages going into depth about the sick imaginings and keeps revisiting them.

I was also upset by Duncan’s lack of empathy or concern for Ellen’s mental and physical well-being when she returns to him and that he didn’t make any real or concerted efforts to find her, even with his resources and connections as a border lord and their favor with the King. And his focus is entirely on whether or not there was penial penetration by her assaulter. Whatever, Duncan.

Final Thoughts

Bertrice Small is a talented writer who put a lot of historical research into this book. She has a devoted fan following and a tv series in the works. While I appreciate good research and strong female characters and generally enjoy more spicy and erotic romance novels, I did not enjoy this book. I found the repeated and extensive sexual assault scenes and fantasies to be disturbing and too much for me personally. And Duncan’s lack of compassion, and his hyperfocus on whether or not a human penis was put in her, is annoying and disappointing.

If you want to hear more of my thoughts on the book, you can listen to the podcast episode on your favorite podcast streaming service. Or click here for our in-house podcast player. I share some fun anatomy references as well as my Romantic Reminder. You can also find out if I won the episode Boobie Prize. Want to read the book for yourself? You can get it here.

Have you read The Border Lord’s Bride? Let me know your thoughts on this book in the comments!