The Knight’s Pledge

Grothaus’s gripping fourth Sons of Scotland medieval romance (after The Scot’s Oath) unites a knight with the daughter of an alleged criminal. Sir Lucan Montague’s steward, Rolf, entreats him to help his acquaintance Effie Annesley, after her son, George, is kidnapped. Despite his past violent run-ins with Effie, who’s spent 15 years living in the woods among a band of outlaws, Lucan reluctantly agrees, and a ransom note leads the unlikely duo to London. All is not as it seems, however, as they learn that King Henry’s own forces kidnapped George, and the king threatens to make the boy a ward of the crown if Effie and Lucan fail to deliver Effie’s outlaw father, Thomas, to justice. The pair travel to Scotland in search of him, but as Lucan gets to know Effie, he stops thinking his mission is to capture a wanted man and begins to view it as a quest to help the woman who’s captured his heart—whatever the cost. Grothaus packs in the intrigue as her nicely developed characters navigate a world where the line between right and wrong is often blurred in pursuit of survival. Readers won’t want to put this down. (Mar.)