title: Against Her Will
author: Sturgill, Nicole
description: Temperance Hall was born the daughter to a poor farmer and his seamstress wife. When her mother and two younger siblings were killed by fever and her father and older brothers by a rebel soldiers bullet, Temperance was left all alone and things went from bad to worse when she was found by a horrid man who made a habit of finding pretty young women of marrying age and marrying them to the highest bidder he could find. Pain, hunger and fear became the only constants in her life and Temperance had hoped that her new husband would take her away from all that--she had hoped wrong. He seemed to love causing her pain and shame in any way that he could and Temperance began to realize that only through death would she ever have any relief… Then came the day when her husband’s brother returned home. The war was long over, but he’d fought for the confederacy and just been released from a prison camp and allowed to get back to his life. He seemed broken and it wasn’t only the injuries to his body that made him seem that way--his soul seemed just as scarred as her own. Temperance knows that this man, or men like him, had taken her father and brother from her, she knows that she should not desire him because he is not only her brother-in-law but blood relation to the monster she called her husband, but none of that seems to matter. Just as she had lost her family, was found by a slave trader and sold into marriage, she found herself falling in love with the fallen soldier completely against her will.