Aurelie is an orphan of unknown parentage who was raised by nuns in the convent of Briermeade. Lady Lorabelle of Sperling also lived at the convent, in preparation for her marriage to Sir Damon of Wulfere, whom Lorabelle had never met. But the plague has killed Lorabelle and almost everyone else in the convent, leaving Aurelie alone and vulnerable to a pair of vicious thieves who come to raid the empty convent. They attack Aurelie, but she is rescued by Damon, who assumes that she is his fiancée Lorabelle. She does not correct his assumption and they marry.

Damon is a tormented hero, formerly a prisoner of the French, and the rather hapless guardian of four rebellious sisters. (The way they are introduced suggests strongly that the sisters will be the heroines of upcoming novels by the author.) Damon must deal with post traumatic stress syndrome and with some kind of plot afoot in his castle. He is also commitment-shy and unwilling to fall in love with his mysterious bride, so he refuses (rather improbably, I thought) to consummate their marriage.

Aurelie’s plight could have been much more sympathetic than it was. In a plague-ravaged and terribly dangerous world, she had nowhere to turn. When a handsome and powerful knight appears and offers her the protection of his name, you can see why she would agree.

Unfortunately, Aurelie isn’t sympathetic because throughout the book she is passive to the point of unconsciousness. Until the very end of the book, she never takes positive action – she reacts, and she waits. Aurelie silently goes along with Damon’s assumption that she is his betrothed, even though she doesn’t believe she can pull it off, and spends her days anxiously waiting for disclosure. She fears that the two bandits who assaulted her will reappear and tell Damon that she’s not really Lorabelle, so she pretends she doesn’t remember who they are or what they looked like. This didn’t make sense to me: it would be her word against theirs, wouldn’t it? Who would Damon be more likely to believe? I’d have given Damon a complete description and urged him to avenge me; Aurelie does nothing. And when, after their marriage, Damon refuses to come to her bed in spite of their mutual desire, Aurelie does more of the same. Nothing.

Aurelie also seems strangely unaffected by the calamity of the plague. If every single person I had ever known my whole life had died of an agonizing illness, I think I’d have some sort of emotional reaction. Aurelie never does – she just fantasizes about a knight to come and take her away from all this. It’s not that she comes across as cold or uncaring; rather, my impression is that the author simply used the plague as a plot device, without ever thinking about the devastating emotional consequences it would have. Everyone Aurelie ever knew is dead; therefore, no one can identify her. No ink was shed in telling us how Aurelie felt about the deaths of the nuns who raised her.

McMinn’s writing style is quite readable, and the details of medieval life she includes are convincing and lend color and life to her setting. But the heroine’s supine attitude was unsympathetic, and her behavior (as well as Damon’s) was unconvincing. I never believed in them enough to care about their love story. A much better book – one with a rather similar plot – is Secret Swan by Shana Abé.