"A wonderful historical"

English Protestant Jamie Blakewell hopes his Oxford University friend Lord Sheffield Tate III can influence the House of Lords to employ a navy against the French. However, Sheff is not the same caring person Jamie knew and respected. Instead he seems abusive, mean spirited and obsessed, especially with Irish Catholic lass Brighid. Jamie decides to keep Brighid safe by hiding her from his former friend though he pretends to help a man he believes is mad.

Brighid hates the English though her warden seems nicer than most. She grew up with memories like the English overlords starving her mother, selling her father into slavery, and stealing his land. Star crossed as any couple could be, Brighid and Jamie fall in love while their religions excommunicate each other's believers. Then there is the psychopath Sheff who willingly will kill a friend to possess Brighid and he is coming.

The second medieval romance (see the delightful SWEET RELEASE) CARNAL GIFT is a wonderful historical because the audience can understand the obstacles that the lead couple face if they want their love to forge a permanent relationship. Brighid and Jamie should never be able to find a love as their nations' war and their religions squabble even more, but it is their courage that makes this more than a prisoner of love tale. Though Sheff is too much a lunatic, fans will enjoy Pamela Clare's fine tale of hate turning into a "taboo" love.

Harriet Klausner

Reviewed by Harriet Klausner
Posted February 23, 2004

Summary

Her body and her virginity are to be offered up to a stranger in exchange for her brother's life. Possessing nothing but her innocence and her fierce Irish pride, Brighid's has no choice but to comply.

But the handsome man she faces in the darkened bedchamber is not at all the monster she expected. His tender touch calms her fears while he swears he will protect her by merely pretending to claim her. And as the long hours of the night pass by, as her senses ignite at the heat of their naked flesh, she makes a startling discovery: Sometimes the line between hate and love can be dangerously thin.