Mothers will do anything to protect their children, and this instinct is at the heart of The Countess.

Eglantine de Crevy, married and widowed twice, has responsibility for three girls. There’s her stepdaughter Alienor, her daughter Jacqueline (both from her first marriage), and from her second marriage is baby Esmeraude, distraught and inconsolable now that Papa’s dead. The victim of two unfortunate marriages, Eglantine refuses to force Jacqueline to marry the lout the girl’s father betrothed her to, years ago. She steals money from her absent brother, grabs the deed to a seemingly worthless estate in Scotland, and drags her daughters and household across half of France and much of Britain to reach dubious sanctuary at Kinbeath, on the rocky Scottish coast. There she encounters the rugged members of the clan with a conflicting claim to the land, and their charismatic leader, Duncan MacLaren.

A poet and bard by nature, but also a good leader, Duncan is at first amused, then impressed, by the Frenchwoman’s determination to assert her right to Ceinn Beithe. But it’s a claim that Duncan knows is fraudulent, since the previous laird of the clan, his foster father Cormac, was illiterate and couldn’t have signed the deed to the property that Eglantine is carrying. Others in the clan urge Duncan to show he’s a worthy leader by forcing the French interlopers off the land, but there’s something about this woman who claims to be a countess that intrigues him, and when her supplies are ransacked and the deed stolen, Duncan’s just as surprised as Eglantine.

The only way to settle the dispute over Kinbeath is to take it to the King of the Isles, so Duncan, accompanied by Eglantine’s steward, sets out. The king’s Solomon-like solution is a period of mutual ownership, sealed with the traditional handfast of a year and a day. Duncan’s all for it, but he knows Eglantine will be less than pleased. When he tries to explain it to her, she won’t listen to him, and before she realizes what’s happened, the ceremony’s concluded. Eglantine is angry and horrified: she’s vowed never to marry again, never to allow a man such total dominion over her. How will she get out of this? The more frightening question is, does she want to get out of it?

It took me a long time to warm up to Duncan. He’s a crafty, clever-tongued devil who enjoys teasing Eglantine a little too much. I thought the conflict between him and his foster brother was not portrayed convincingly, and he’s got a Big Secret that I thought was really not that big a deal at all. On the other hand, once he figures out that he loves Eglantine, he’s very focused in his efforts to win her, including charming her spoiled three-year-old and helping to build shelter for her household. If only she would go along with his plan!

As for Eglantine, while I could appreciate that she was a woman who felt the need to exert control over her life, I did not like her at all. She comes across as cold and something of a control freak, and she plays the “I hate you, I want you, now I’ve had you, so now I remember that I hate you, so go away” game. Minutes after she and Duncan finally consummate their passion, and while she’s still lying in his arms, she shoves at him and commands him to get off her. You can’t blame the guy for being confused.

I found the secondary characters just as unsympathetic. Duncan’s foster brother Iain comes off like a sulky adolescent, unable to get over the fact that his father entrusted the clan to Duncan and not him. Eglantine’s stepdaughter Alienor is little more than an oversexed, pouty teenager, and while I’m not a fan of corporal punishment, I kept thinking that what Eglantine’s toddler Esmeraude needed was a good swat on the bottom (I also found it hard to believe that a twelfth-century man like Duncan would be philosophically opposed to spanking a child). Her other daughter Jacqueline is the “good” daughter, almost too good to be true. As for the identity of the “bad guy,” the one responsible for the vandalism, my reaction was, “I don’t think so, Tim.” Considering who this person was, and how lightly s/he got off in the end, I was totally not convinced.

I had a stylistic problem with this book, as well. One of the things that distracted me as I read was the author’s constant use of dialect in the narrative portions of the story. Now, if characters have a marked accent or use dialect, I expect to run across that in their dialogue. In this case, however, I encountered way too many “‘twoulds” and “’tweres” in the narrative that struck me as artificial and affected. It pulled me out of the story over and over.

I thought and thought about the grade for this book. In spite of the flaws I mentioned above, the hero is passable and the plot kept me going through all the distractions. If you’ve read the rest of this series, you may enjoy it more than I did.