Devil’s Own tells the story of two long suffering people who find hope, healing and love with each other. It’s a leisurely character-driven romance that I found very satisfying – no wallpaper history here.

When he was only ten, Aiden MacAlpin was kidnapped by pirate raiders and sold into slavery in the Caribbean where he spent his youth in bondage. As the book opens, Aiden has escaped his servitude, and returned home. However, Aiden’s siblings can’t see any trace of their brother in this scarred and sullen young man. When his sister discovers he can’t read at all, she arranges for him to be tutored by their neighbor, Elspeth Farquharson.

Elspeth is shy, quiet and bookish. She is plain, as her father is fond of telling her, and is overburdened with work. Mr. Farquharson is filled with Big Ideas, all of which fail, but that doesn’t stop him from wasting their money on one more scheme. Although she is powerless to stop her father, Elspeth has so far managed their tiny farm and kept destitution from their door. Tutoring Aiden will bring in much needed money. Farquharson disapproves – he hates the MacAlpins.

Although he doesn’t tell anyone, Aiden desperately wants to learn to read. He owns a ship’s manifest that has on it the name of the person who kidnapped him, a man whom he only knows as the one with a black pearl earring.

Devil’s Own builds the story of Elspeth and Aiden very slowly. There’s no instant lust at all, instead their attraction develops gradually. Under her plain exterior, Elspeth has a deeply romantic nature. She longs for love, but she’s never received it from her ineffectual and unfeeling father. She makes up stories about castles on the hill as she does her many chores, yet she is no air-headed princess wannabe. Elspeth’s fantasies are her method of coping with hard work and no love or appreciation.

Today we’d say that Aiden suffers from PTSD. He lost most of his childhood and all of his adolescence to slavery (and he bears the brand of it in his flesh and soul). At first, he is a sullen, brooding shell of a man, obsessed only with vengeance, but his relationship with Elspeth changes him. In a rousing climax, Aiden realizes that Elspeth is his future and his all – she means the sun, moon and stars to him. The world may see only a plain little woman, but to him she is Aphrodite herself.

I very much enjoyed this book, the second in the Clan MacAlpin series. I’m not a huge fan of Scottish romances as a whole, but I do like individual titles especially if they are as vivid and passionate as this one is.