My Lady's Treasure Book

OK, I found this one confusing.

Let's start with the premise: Faye Rivellaux is a penniless widow, shattered by the loss of her child through miscarriage. Her best friend was married to a fellow named Torr, and they had a daughter named Angeline. When Angeline's mum died not so long ago, she extracted Faye's promise that she'd look after the girl. Torr allowed Faye to move into his castle, the better to make her queasy with his lustful gazes and erratic behavior.

Now Angeline has been abducted. And the ransom note comes to Faye, with instructions that she tell no one about it, and bring a lot of silver to a certain site. Because it makes PERFECT sense that the kidnappers, instead of going to the wealthy lord who is the kid's father, would expect a penniless widow to come up with the loot all on her own.

Brant Meslarches is recently back from the crusades, and wallows in guilt because while in the Holy Land he killed his brother. Torr helped cover it up, but now he's using what he knows to get Brant to do his bidding'namely, Brant's supposed to show up at the beach where Faye is to deliver the ransom, and scare the crap out of her for some reason.

Brant's told she won't have the ransom, so he's gobsmacked when she actually shows up with some loot'a gold cup. More to the point, it's an old, Celtic gold cup. Brant's dead brother was obsessed with finding King Arthur's treasure, and Brant wants to find it for him, maybe make up for, like, killing him and all. So now Brant's really interested in Faye, cuz maybe she knows where the treasure is.

Astute readers will already have done the math wrt the kidnap/ransom thing (the whodunit is fairly obvious. The whydunit is not nearly as clear, but eh, ok), but the H/h take their sweet time'close to 16 chapters'figuring it out.

In fact, when Faye shows up with the cup, and Brant doesn't bring the little girl, she fails to jump to the most logical conclusion'that he must have done away with the child and might also do away with Faye. There's a struggle over the cup and she clonks her head, and he carries her through a storm to his room at the inn, where they exchange a lot of sexually-charged conversation. Because, if *I* thought a guy kidnapped and probably killed a little girl, I'd be all about his big manly chest and biceps, too. Anyway, in the end, she steals the cup back from him, takes the time to change back into her storm-drenched clothing where he might catch her instead of taking off in the borrowed outfit and changing in the shrubbery on the way, and heads back to Torr's place. OK, so why would she do that? By this time she believes Brant's claim that somebody else has the kid, and that he was sent to get the ransom. So why would she steal the ransom back? Wouldn't she be afraid that by taking the loot she's guaranteed the child's death?

Later she sees him talking to Torr; they clearly know each other. She still doesn't do the math. Then Brant shows up in her room and kisses her senseless, and when she starts to struggle he promises not to rape her, and she says "How can I believe that when I don't even know your name?"



Really? THAT's the reason she shouldn't trust him? NOT that he is apparently part of a conspiracy to kidnap and maybe murder a child?

As for Torr and his part of the whole mess'well, that makes sense once you realize that it doesn't have to.

I liked the first book in this anthology better. 2.5 stars'will bump to 3 because at least it's a Medieval, though it's only talk about the crusades and a few trappings that set the date.