Silver's newest (after His Dark Kiss
), set against the wilds of early 19th-century Cornwall, makes a moody gothic romance out of the business arrangement between a crippled innkeeper and a vengeful privateer. Poor innkeeper Gideon Heatherington has only one option when stolid, hardened privateer Aidan Warrick shows up demanding payment on the inn's mortgage; he must sell his daughter, Jane, into indentured servitude to Aidan for a period of seven years. Anger over the innkeeper's past misdeeds fuels Aidan's attempts to keep his distance from the beguiling Jane, but he finds himself protecting her despite himself. Jane, for her part, can't help being intrigued by the man who makes “an ugly knot of terror curdle in her stomach.” As the attraction between them simmers, Aidan unwittingly reveals his caring side and, eventually, his troubling secrets. Domestic tension and Aidan's mysterious past drive the novel nicely, and the evolving, bittersweet relationship between the two damaged souls is, appropriately, this romance's strongest aspect. (Aug.)
