The Devil's Mistress Book

James II's Scotland, and the witch hunt is on. Pegeen MacCardle has been taken up by a fanatical witchfinder named Matthews. Brianna, her niece, ignores the advice of friends and neighbors and comes to the town square, where Pegeen is to burn. Brianna's cry of grief grabs Matthews' attention. Stunned by the perfection of her face and form, he cries "witch" yet again.

In mindless grief and terror, Brianna weaves through the streets of her small harbor town until she stumbles into a tavern. A patron there mistakes her for the whore he'd requested. With the witch-hunters hard on her heels, her only choice is to play along.

The man, Sloan Treveryan, is frustrated and a little fascinated by this doxy; she's clearly reluctant to play, but just about the time he offers to send her on her way, she practically begs to stay and service him. He's even more puzzled when he realizes she was a virgin. Then he sees the witch hunt under way on the street and everything makes sense. When Matthews pounds on Sloan's door, demanding that he hand over the devil's whore he's taken to his bed, he basically tells Matthews to go blow himself. Needless to say, that puts him on the "suspected witch" list, and that's a damned hard list to get off of.

Soon as Matthews runs off for reinforcements, Brianna demands to leave, but Sloan can't let her go, A) because, well, he can't l'something in him just won't turn loose, and B) because he knows Matthews will track her down, no matter where she runs. Brianna insists she can get away to relatives who'll protect her, but against her protests, Sloan drags her to his ship and locks her in his cabin, thus commencing his subtle campaign of seduction.



Brianna's outraged by her abduction and afraid of being raped. She's shamed by what she's done and terrified of the fact that some part of her can't seem to resist Sloan's touch, even now that she knows what he is. She refuses to be his whore and is horrified and angry when Sloan's crew sees her as one. He's angry at her for being nice to everybody but him. She's mad at him because he gives her his cast-off mistress's clothes to wear, and won't let her sleep in another cabin. These two spend most of the book mad at each other, for reasons great and trivial.



An attempted escape ends with Brianna in Matthews' clutches, and he "proves" she's a witch in a way that is historically accurate'and that made me wonder if some witch-finders might have been piquerists (look it up). I'm giving nothing away (since this is a romance and there has to be a HEA) by telling you there's a rescue.

So anyway, Sloan and Brianna finally admit their love. But then Brianna learns why Sloan won't marry her. She can't deal, so she gets together with her people and heads out to New England. You'll never guess where she ends up settling.



The story takes on some characteristics of an epic simply by virtue of having so many twists and turns and interconnected facets. I enjoyed it, and Graham clearly did research the witch craze around that period, both in England and in the Americas, though she fictionalizes some points for the story. Four stars.