DREAMS OF LILACS is a gentle and chivalrous romance by
one of my favorite author, Lynn Kurland. Book 16 in the
de Piaget series, new readers will nonetheless be
able to comfortably read it without foreknowledge of
Isabelle de Piaget's large family from prior books. This
book felt to me more similar to her Nine Kingdoms
books than to her more recent de Piaget novels,
although there is no time traveling in the de Piaget series.
Typical of Kurland, this is a chaste and respectful love
between hero and heroine until the sacrament of marriage is
celebrated.
Isabelle is the youngest child of Rhys and Gwen Piaget,
who has lived in her siblings' shadows her entire life. She
says of herself, "I have spent the whole of my life standing
in the shadows, saying nothing at all." She receives an
anonymous missive telling her to go to a particular abbey in
France by herself, or her grandparents will die. Isabelle
escapes her protective family and makes her way by trickery
into the boat heading to France, but due to a terrible storm
that sinks her ship, she washes up on shore with amnesia.
Gervase de Seger, Lord of Monsaert, is known as a beast
and a despoiler of women (although he's not really either).
He narrowly escaped death in a castle fire some months
ago, after being shot in the leg. He is trying to find out
who is trying to kill him and struggling with his residual
traumatic disabilities, and this has made him very grumpy.
He stumbles upon Isabelle in the road and thinks she is a
servant boy. He first puts her to work laboring in his
castle as a kitchen servant, although his brother, and
eventually he, realize who the redoubtable and lofty
Isabelle is.
While Isabelle and Gervase slowly and independently
figure out who Isabelle is and why she's in France, Isabelle
charms Gervase's family and helps with Gervase's recovery
from his injuries. Danger continues to stalk both, however,
as vipers in their midst work against them. As Isabelle and
Gervase work together and separately to unravel who is
threatening them, they slowly fall in love.
Kurland is talented enough to keep this love tender and
sweet,rather than treacly. DREAMS OF LILACS feels gentle and
warm, like your favorite fuzzy, cozy blanket you want to
wrap yourself in happily before the fire. I love Kurland's
writing style, too, which is so lyrical and evocative. Much
of Isabelle's family arrives in France by the end of the
book, and the love within each family is palpable, and the
ribbing between siblings provides a good deal of humor
throughout the book.
DREAMS OF LILACS is another winner from Lynn Kurland. Keep
'em coming, Lynn!
Isabelle de Piaget is determined to elude her overprotective
family by means of a hasty escape to France. But instead of
making a surprise visit to her brother there, she winds up
shipwrecked on the French coast with no memory of who she is
or how she came to awaken in the dark and forbidding castle
of an equally brooding lord.
Gervase de Seger rescues—very reluctantly—the bedraggled
urchin he finds on the road and puts her to work where he
can ignore her. Unfortunately, he soon realizes that her
brother is an intimidating lord who is going to be
absolutely furious when he learns that his beloved sister
has been laboring as a scullery maid. Yet Isabelle may be
the one who holds the key to solving Gervase’s most pressing
problem: that someone has been trying to finish the task of
separating him from his title and his lands.
Finding the truth propels Gervase and Isabelle from the
buried secrets of half-ruined keeps to the glittering French
court, and to the realization that love can blossom in the
most perilous circumstances—and in the most unexpected
places of the heart . . .
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