One of my pet peeves predominates in this book, and that peeve seems to be rampant in romances these days: Mind-numbing repetition. Let the hero and heroine tell me why they can’t get together once; draw it out if you like. But don’t keep repeating it throughout the story. I get it already. I already know they’ll be together in the end. I want to know how that happens, how they change their minds.

Rosalind Meadowfield, companion to Lady Evedon, is having one of those days when things go from awful to worse. It’s bad enough she’s suspected of stealing her employer’s diamonds and emeralds, but when the diamonds are found in her lingerie drawer, the case seems to be closed despite the still missing emeralds. Rosalind, who didn’t steal anything, is horrified and, since she has a secret she’s hiding, fears her employer’s son will have her sent to jail and hung as a thief.

Fortunately, she knows the Evedon family big secret thanks to a letter the son drops. She doesn’t want to use the damning letter against them, however; she just wants to escape and build herself a new life. With a newspaper advertisement for a potential position, she sneaks away to Scotland where she applies for the position north of Edinburgh.

Enraged that not only are his mother’s emeralds still missing, but the letter is also gone, the son hires thief-taker Will Wolversley, late of the Army’s 26th Regiment. Will, the bastard son of a lord who turned away his mother, leaving them in poverty, hates the aristocracy, a hatred he dwells on time and again throughout the book.

Having captured Rosalind, Will begins the overland trek to bring her back to London and her fate. Rosalind is nothing but plucky, trying to escape almost every mile of the way, giving Will more and more chances to ruminate on his hatred of the upper class. Between Rosalind’s incessant bemoaning of her fear of the gallows and Will’s diatribes about the upper class, they come together and fall in love. Hard to believe, huh?

Unfortunately, this pet peeve is joined by pet peeve number two: Changing horses at the end of the book. Since I can’t give away the ending, suffice it to say that McPhee wants readers to believe something that she not only hasn’t prepared them for, but also nulls the raison d’être of one of them. Suddenly, one character totally changes position, making previous comments seem silly.

The saving graces, and the reason for the grade, are that McPhee’s prose is enjoyable when she is describing the countryside, and Will’s friend and cohort Struan Campbell is a truly likeable rogue. Perhaps a little more banter between him and Will, rounding out their characters and eliminating a bit of Will’s harping about the ton would have made this seem like a less repetitious book, thereby making it more enjoyable in the process.