Stolen Dreams

Lyndell ( Tapestry of Pride ) sets a predictable love story in the debauched and perilous years of the Stuart challenge to the Hanoverian kings. The Scottish Baron Kinsale and Gillie, a beauteous maid forced to make her way as a thief in the London slums, fall in love; the all-too-familiar plot is revived neither by the spirited dialogue nor even by Lyndell's commendably drawn hardscrabble locales. Worse yet, a key scene in which a scheming patrician woman supposedly makes a selfless show of love by burning a letter that could somehow incriminate the blameless Baron Kinsale strains credibility, making the Baron seem gullible instead of noble. The ending is pure deus ex machina, where the return of a man presumed dead is merely one of the hoary devices employed. (Dec.)