The Rose of Blacksword

When Lady Rosalynde is attacked and robbed en route to her home, Stanwood Castle, she looks to the nearest village for help and stumbles on a combination festival/public hanging. Moving among the crowd, Rosalynde hears that if a woman claims a condemned man for a ``handfast'' (a trial marriage that lasts a year and a day)51 , he'll be spared. Rosalynde selects ``a fine specimen'' called Blacksword and by promising him a horse and weapons persuades him to escort her home. Blacksword is in fact the honorable Sir Aric and has been framed; his reward will help him find his enemy, Sir Gilbert Poole. After this imaginative meeting, Becnel ( Thief of My Heart ) dumps her characters into a tediously formulaic relationship, and with so little action, the setting feels more like the doldrums than the Middle Ages. Back at Stanwood, Rosalynde cannot reveal her dubious marriage to her father. But Aric earns a place in the household while she dabbles in medieval housekeeping; the author seems to be killing time until Gilbert arrives to force a resolution. (June)