Review: Now THIS is Chivalry!
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 03 26, 2013
Lady Elizabeth Amaranth, "Amie" for the sake of saving a few syllables, is a woman on the run.  She flees a sadistic husband after wielding a candlestick against him, and seeks refuge in a small village. Her husband, Odo, sends his men to find her and return her to his beastly clutches, and they completely destroy the village and slaughter all the inhabitants. When Amie runs into the woods, she is attacked and nearly killed herself when the hero, Ciaran Tamberlane, comes upon the carnage of the village that was under his protection and saves her life.Tamberlane is an excommunicated Templar known as the Dragonslayer, who left the service of Church and King in disgrace after defending a young woman from soldiers in the Holy Land. Ciaran has come to value his privacy, the solitude of his keep, and the friendship of Marak, an Albino healer who has accompanied him from the East. He wants nothing to do with the insensate girl he rescues, but honor dictates that he at least insist she's relatively well before she leaves his care.As Amie heals, her fascination with Ciaran and the fits and starts of compassion he offers her grows. Ciaran seems unable to keep himself from his charge, and becomes more and more invested in her welfare and safety. With Odo's suspicions that Tamberlane may be harboring his fugitive wife on the rise and a plot to assassinate King Richard brewing, there's enough action and suspense mixed in with the sensitive, mature romance to keep you reading until late in the night or early in the morning!I adored this story and all the characters, the attention to detail regarding historical events, and the build up of the plot. This was my first Marsha Canham novel, and I immediately hopped back onto Amazon and purchased her Robin Hood trilogy because this book was THAT fantastic. She is now an auto-buy for me, and I look forward to more of her storytelling.