Liz Carlyle's "The Bride Wore Scarlet"

Grade: B

passion rating: warm

Halfway through Liz Carlyle’s latest historical romance, The Bride Wore Scarlet, I put it down and went to reread the first book in The Fraternitas Trilogy, Ms. Carlyle’s latest slightly paranormal series. I enjoyed that book, One Touch of Scandal, but had forgotten its premise. I was glad I did — One Touch of Scandal is a fun tale and rereading it placed the plot and the characters in The Bride Wore Scarlet in context. One could read The Bride Wore Scarlet without having read One Touch of Scandal, but it wouldn’t be as meaningful.

I use that word deliberately. In this series Ms. Carlyle poses significant questions about destiny, fate, and responsibility. Her heroes and heroines struggle, at times painfully, to carve out lives — and loves — true to the tasks and talents life has bestowed upon them.

The hero in The Bride Wore Scarlet is Geoff, Lord Bessett — the son of the couple from an earlier Ms. Carlyle novel Three Little Secrets. Geoff, like the hero in One Touch of Scandal, has the gift of the Sight. The word gift, though, is a misnomer. It’s no gift to see the dangers about and the deaths to come of those around you. It’s a huge responsibility and requires enormous mental discipline. Geoff has that discipline, but it’s made him a chilly, almost remote man. The one thing he gives himself to is the work of the St. James Society (the fraternity of the series), an ancient group of Guardians whose mission is to protect those with the gift of the Sight, called the Vateis, typically women and children, from those who would exploit the Vateis’ abilities for evil ends. Additionally, Geoff, who has struggled with the burden of the Sight all his life, knows a child with the Sight must be trained to understand and successfully manage the gift. So, when the Society learns there is a young Vateis in Brussels whose Guardian has been murdered and who, with her mother, is virtually imprisoned by an iniquitous man (the rogue plans to use the girl’s gift to restore the French monarchy) Geoff volunteers to go to Brussels and convey the mother and daughter back to England.

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