A Rose in Winter

Solange, daughter of the Marquess of Ironstag, grew up with and grew to love the brooding Damon Wolf, orphaned son of her father's vassal, the Marquess of Lockewood. But their plans to marry are thwarted when Solange's father marries her to the sinister Stephen, Earl of Redmond. After nine years of tortured captivity, Solange is visited by Damon, now a marquess himself, and convinces him that her husband is dead and she must escape. Abe occasionally overwrites (""I would never be so clumsy as to fall from a turret. I have had a plethora of experience in climbing them""), or scatters a late-14th-century title (marquess) through the 13th-century English countryside. But Abe avoids most pitfalls; she more often opts for winning simplicity in her dialogue (""It's like that sometimes"") than for the melodrama or ye olde faux English of many medievals. And despite what she's been through, Solange isn't a hysteric but a convincing mix of tenacious cunning and slightly unstable fragility. (Jan.)