If you are fond of romances that are driven by “the big misunderstanding” then you will probably enjoy Threads of Destiny. It is a book filled with passion, history, deception, intrigue, and good folk and bad folk, but mostly it is about two people who refuse to be honest with each other and yet find each other irresistibly attractive.

Suisan Harper is a woman who has had to run her family’s weaving business since she was very young. She also has the task of keeping the Scottish Tartan pattern sticks out of British hands – a responsibility passed on from her mother. The Maide dalbh, as the pattern sticks are called, have disappeared from her home and she heads to London to recover them from her step-brother, Myles, who is supposed to have stolen them. She disguises herself as a maid in his household, and begins the rather lengthy process of finding and retrieving them, with the assistance of her companion, Nelly, a salty-tongued family servant. Myles hasn’t seen Suisan since she was 12, plus, she has colored her hair, so when he unexpectedly returns from sea, Myles doesn’t recognize her, and begins to seduce the “new maid” as soon as he puts down his injured companion. Suisan finds Myles irresistible as well, and they begin an affair which lasts until she has retrieved the Maide dalbh, and she heads for home, having unexpectedly (to her) gotten herself pregnant. Myles tracks her down, and after much deceit from both sides, they solve the problem of the Tartans and settle down.

How would you feel if your lover turned out to be your step-sister? Wouldn’t that bug you? Admittedly, the two aren’t really related, but the whole time they’re being intimate, Myles is still thinking of Suisan as his dear, estranged little sister, while Suisan is pretending to be a servant – and knowing all the while her lover is her step-brother. Even more dismaying is when Myles finds out who Suisan really is, he isn’t too bothered by it. This wasn’t the only thing that bugged me. Lamb falls back on an all-too-common plot device in Historicals by making the bad guy a homosexual. Even keeping in mind the times, where homosexuality was not tolerated by Scottish peoples, this book was chock full of slurs like fairie and fruit. I also got very frustrated with the heroine. Myles proves to her again and again, in many ways, that he didn’t steal the Tartans, and yet it takes her most of the book to believe him. I wanted to shake her.

Yet, there were many things to like about this book. The sexual tension is intense, and the “take the virgin” scene, which is something I don’t particularly enjoy, was sensitively written. The secondary characters were rounded enough to give the story a realistic feel. A scene near the end (without giving too much of the plot away) where Suisan deals with the Maide dalbh is moving enough to bring tears to my eyes. Lastly, the epilogue is uplifting, humorous, and touching.

Romance makes a great forum. Through it, a writer can expose the reader to finer points in history, new cultures, human experiences that are out of the ordinary, political and social issues, and many other mind-opening ideas. The reverse is that we may get exposed to a writer’s intolerance. A trade, in my mind, that is worth the chance to learn something new. Threads of Destiny covers a bit of interesting Scottish history and teaches about how weaving was done in the past. But, whether or not the author was just portraying the times, or putting into the book some of her own biases (I hope the former), was hard to distinguish.