Krishna
Despite the superficial resemblance in title to The Devil Wears Prada, this is a very different type of story. It is a love tale with highlanders and earls and castles and all the trappings of a medieval story.
Emmaline Marlowe was unwed at twenty one! She was resigned to being ‘shelved’ when an old laird notices her sitting with spinsters, invites her to a dance with him and ends up marrying her. He is the earl, and you soon realize he has no honorable bone in his body. These kind of stories are black and white, no shades of gray anywhere in them.
He is years older than her, with rheumatic eyes and dentures. But he was an earl. When she is about to submit to the old man, in comes a young man on a horse and says to the earl that he has come to kidnap her.
His name is Sinclair. He plans to capture Emmaline until the earl gives him his due. Takes her away on the horse and flees. (Typical romantic adventure? Hell, yes!)
She runs away in the night and Sinclair, of course, does not want to alert his entire entourage. Knowing that she has left a large trail, he follows but then she has fallen down a large deep incline but has been saved by some trees. He reaches her and brings her back. She faints half way back and he is forced to build a fire and try to revive her.
He keeps her warm and chaste and brings her back. She tries to take his piston in an effort to escape and he thwarts her.
So, yes, this is a typical formulaic story, where the ‘evil man’ who takes her away is really golden and that the ‘good man’ who was to be her husband is really an ogre in polished clothes. The story has been done a hundred times. However, it is in the narration that this kind of a story stands or falls and in this case, luckily, the author has a sure hand and keeps the story moving – showing the growing attraction on both sides coupled with the need to stay within boundaries in order to get the Earl to do what Jamie wants.
Emma learns that Jamie is really kind, has the absolute loyalty of his group, has never misbehaved with women… you get the idea. The Earl had taken the castle that was really the Sinclair clan’s, and what’s more, is now obsessed with exterminating the entire Sinclair clan.
Jamie reveals to Emma that what he is seeking in exchange is just a Sinclair necklace that is of no value to anyone but him. She also learns that Jamie’s father was the earl’s own son and since he dared to fall in love with a Sinclair, his mother, they were both slaughtered even if they had run away and hid. Jamie was born by then and the earl spent the rest of his life trying to eliminate the sole Sinclair heir.
Emma decides that she does not want to wed the earl anymore and knows
When the ransom arrives, Jamie asks his folks to hide in nearby bushes and then goes to get his ‘ransom’. He is shocked to see that Ian, whom he taught fighting and who is one thinking man under the earl’s service has come. When he asks for the ransom he is given a huge amount of gold – and understands the earl’s trickery. He then decides not to take anything and releases Emma to go over but she is ambushed by a man high up on the tree and hit by a bullet.
That man is the new gamekeeper who shot her. But since she turned just at the right moment, it was a flesh wound and she was taken by Jamie and nursed back to health. Several things become apparent. The necklace that Jamie was seeking was in a box given by his old nursemaid Magus. It was Jamie’s father who killed the couple, unaware that they had wed earlier and that Jamie was not a bastard. The father accepts blame, fully expecting Jamie to kill him.
Meanwhile, Ian realizes how evil his uncle is, and joins with Jamie on a plot to bring the earl down. She returns with him to the earl, pretending to be totally in love and how the uncouth Sinclair clan kept her captive while they drunk every night and scowled at her.
The uncle, trapped into marriage, asks Ian discreetly if he could father their child by visiting his bride’s bed every night until ‘he succeeded’.
Of course, Ian plays along. On the day of the wedding, the earl’s plans fall apart and Jamie comes to claim his rightful bride. And the earldom as rightfully his. And the cheers of an adoring crowd.
A well told, simple story that keeps you reading until the end.
Not shocking or even unexpected, but I think well told.
7/10
— Krishna