Fortunately, my friend does.
Lady Maxwell related details of how two fourteenth-century Dunwythie sisters met and married their husbands. (“Dunwythie” is the fourteenth-century spelling for Dinwiddie, Dunwoodie, and similar Scottish surnames.) SEDUCED BY A ROGUE is the story of the elder sister, Mairi.
Relying on details passed down in Maxwell anecdotes over a period of two hundred years, Lady Maxwell portrayed that clan favorably and Mairi’s father as a scoundrel. The trouble, her ladyship wrote, was all Lord Dunwythie’s fault.
So the challenge for me was to figure out the Dunwythies’ side of things and what lay at the center of the conflict. That proved to be a fascinating puzzle.
Her ladyship provided few specifics, but the dispute clearly concerned land. The Maxwells thought they owned or controlled that land. Dunwythie disagreed.
The Maxwell who had claimed ownership (or threatened to take ownership) was just a Maxwell, not a lord or a knight. However, Dunwythie was Lord Dunwythie of Dunwythie, and that Annandale estate stayed in Dunwythie hands for nearly two hundred years longer. In the fourteenth century, landowners were knights, barons, or earls—or they were royal. So, clearly, Dunwythie owned the land.
Next, I discovered that the Maxwells were then the hereditary sheriffs of Dumfries. Sheriffs (“shire-reeves”) were enormously powerful in both Scotland and England, because they administered whole counties (shires), collected taxes, and held their own courts of law. The fact that Annandale lies within Dumfries-shire was a key to what most likely happened between the Dunwythies and the Maxwells.
The result is the trilogy that began with TAMED BY A LAIRD (January 2009) and continues now with SEDUCED BY A ROGUE. It will end with TEMPTED BY A WARRIOR (January 2010).
I hope you enjoy all of them. In the meantime, Suas Alba!
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