For twelve years, Tilly Trotter had devotedly served Mark Sopwith as nurse and mistress; a wife in all but name. Now he was dead, and her whole future lay in the balance. At least one of his grown-up children was extremely hostile, determined to banish her from Highfield Manor as soon as possible and, to make the situation even more difficult, Mark had left Tilly four months pregnant. But she was no stranger to trouble and hardship, and would meet these new problems with the same courage and resolution that she had displayed in facing up to earlier crises. Fate still had a lot in store for Matilda Trotter - good and ill alike. She would make a real marriage, and this would take her from her native Tyneside to experience all the wonders and perils of a strange and distant land. Tilly Trotter Wed is a story of wide scope and imagination, and the first of Catherine Cookson's books in which a large part of the action takes place away from England - in the vividly evoked pioneer Texas of the 1850s.