Damian St Giles, sick with love for Tamlyn MacShane, Lady of Glenrogha, is kidnapped and taken to Tamlyn’s cousin, the Lady Aithinne Ogilvy.  With Longshanks securing a deadly grip on the throat of Scotland, Aithinne is in dire need of a man.  She intends to keep Damian prisoner for six nights and then release him.  She will rear the son she expects from the union, the son she needs in order to save her people.

In Her Bed is a historical romance set in the days of Edward III, when potion-inducing nights of passion seem commonplace and seeresses pop out of the forests like rabbits.  Damian falls for his lady jailor and she for him.  When she discovers he thinks she is her cousin Tamlyn MacShane, she cannot bear to see him again and sets him free.  Once restored, Damian finds the English king has granted him new lands, and sets out to claim them.  Of course, he finds himself at the door of Aithinne’s castle.

The resulting chaos is entertaining.  Ms MacGillivray understands how to tell a cracking story with just the right blend of emotion, pathos and farce plus an injection of huge danger for both hero and heroine in the final pages.  If you don’t mind a historical in which the characters use anachronistic language, you will enjoy this tale very much indeed.  And I suspect that the legion of fans of Restless Knight, her first book about the Dragons of Challon, will not mind at all.

Unhappily for me, I find anachronisms jolt me out of the story.  In 1296, the term “showcase” was surely unknown?  Knights, I am convinced, did not “suss things out,” and I seriously doubt a Pictish princess felt “leery” of meeting a swain?  Or needed “a rundown” of happenings taking place in her absence?

The copy I had was an ARC, and the odd language may well have been removed from the final book. I do hope so.