The Hodder and Stoughton library of great historical novels

Scotland in 1750.... Four years had passed since Culloden. Yet hatred still descended on the conquerors like the mist from the hills. The rebel Jamie MacDonald still lurked in the heather, evading capture despite the price on his head, his broken health, his lameness. And every so often---much too often---another redcoat would be picked off crossing the moors. In this occupied land that had already lost the half of its people, it seemed the other half waited silently to kill the intruder. Captain Adams had been posted to Culloden itself, his prime task to capture Jamie MacDonald: in this, beside a small company of nervous men, he had the doubtful assistance of Helen Moir, a voluptuous, black-haired virago who boasted of betraying Scotland, and the active resistance of gentle, indomitable Kirsty who could, he knew, quietly poison anyone who tried to ferret out her Jamie.

This novel is set in Indonesia in the seventeenth century, and it is characterized by the author's remarkable power to convey place and period. The heroine, Julie Ashley loses her family and her identity when Cromwell ravages Ireland and she is rescued from starvation by a Dutch sea captain. From Amsterdam she is eventually sent to an island in the East Indies as a partner in a 'Glove Marriage', bound irrevocably to a man she has never seen. In the mysterious island of Rua, with its luxury and cruelty, even her virtues are brought into conflict, and for the reader, the outcome remains uncertain until the end.