England 1461 - Tristan Ainsworth and Lily Gray were running away together because her parents had forbidden their union. The race to get away ended in a tragic accident. The eldest of the Ainsworth brothers had been the first one to come upon the overturned carriage, after checking for any survivors, Benedict spirited Tristan and his baby daughter away leaving Lily presumed dead in the carriage. Seeing his Lily in a road side inn and her having no idea who he was, left Tristan with and intense need to find out how she could forget him and their child. Only having known what her parents had told her since her illness, the assurances of Tristan meant nothing to her, even after she had discovered how her body responded to him. Uncertain of his motives and his interest in her, she gave him the benefit of doubt for only so long and then she started having memories, would it be to little to late?

Book 1 ….. Good introduction into this family, the Ainsworth brothers are all strong men. I don’t typically like a relationship that has already been. I like to ‘see’ it from the beginning. With this, Lily’s amnesia kind of allows that to happen. Both characters have to learn to love each other again, so it is kind of from the beginning. This is also the first book of a series of four, so it has lots of introductions to characters and lots of information that will (I can feel) be important in subsequent books. I liked Tristan and Lily, even the hints of Marcel and Genevieve, but the book that I will be looking forward to the most is the one for the oldest of the brothers, Benedict’s story should be a good one, which I believe is also the next one (The Bride of Spring). ( )

Um...yuck. It reads like a Regency romance poorly transported to a few centuries earlier. There are, I believe, a _lot_ of anachronisms - closed carriages, with arms on the side, on a rural road in the 1400s? Yeah...not. Maybe in London there were roads smooth enough for that. And the signal tower. His motivations are seriously twisted, hers are equally seriously confused. And the way he can't comprehend her loyalty to her family - OK, he knows how they treated her earlier and she doesn't, but still. He never tries to understand how she's feeling. And the convenient way their various engagements go away, and...like that. I usually like family sagas, but I'm not even interested enough to track down the others. Oh yeah, and this is the 'lest' lady - they use the wrong word less often than in Dragon's Dower, but often enough to annoy me. Really really not good. Oh, and there's a romance in there too - pffff. Mutual lust and her distrust, over and over until she regains her memory and then it's happy ever after. No character development at all. Bah. ( )