A Year and a Day

By Virginia Henley

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From New York Times best-selling author Virginia Hentley, whose romantic novels have enhanced readers worldwide, comes her most tempestuous and emotional love story to date, the tale of an innocent Scottish maiden and a battle scarred English baron who is desperate to have a child.

As Edward Plantagenet's armies invade Scotland, Lynx de Warenne, one of the king's most prized warriors, is ordered to secure the royal castle at Dumfries in the crucial border lands. There he encounters Jock Leslie, the castle's steward, a man with ten children and thirty-one grandchildren, who might have the means of fulfilling Lynx's greatest desire. A thirty-year old childless widower, Lynx wants more than anything a child who will brighten his life, carry on the de Warenne name, and maintain the family's landholdings. Yet he is a man who is afraid to love and is haunted by the possibility that he is unable to sire a child. When Jocks learns of Lynx's desire to become a father, he suggests handfasting, a Scottish custom whereby a man and a woman can lawfully sleep together for a year and a day, at the end of which time the couple decides either to wed or to part. If the union produces a child, the child is deemed legitimate even if no marriage takes place.

When Jock offers Lynx his youngest, most strong willed daughter, Jane, so desperate is Lynx to mate with a member of the fertile family that he engages Jane in handfasting --- no matter that she is a commoner, no matter that she is terrified of him and attempts to make herself unattractive t him in the extreme, no matter that she is completely inexperienced with men.

From this unlikely plot Henley weaves a story of two bigger than life characters that allows the reader to completely escape into this time in Scottish history. The references to William Wallace and Robert the Bruce tie the characters into a time frame that most Scottish buffs are familiar with and make it most enjoyable.

This book has a lot of explicit sex and is not something that younger children should be allowed to read.