MacLyon Author:Lolah Burford It begins on a spring evening in the Scottish Highlands in 1746. Diarmid, eldest son of MacLyon, is riding through town, half drunk, when he spies a pretty young girl, abducts her, forces a clergyman to marry them & takes his terrified young bride, Mary Elisabeth, to bed. The following morning, Diarmid is disowned by his father and kicked, n... more »aked, off the land. A few days later he returns; the bloody Protestant rebellion is on. The King's Soldiers storm the MacLyon stronghold, hang Diarmid's father & rape Mary Elisabeth. Diarmid kills two soldiers before he is hauled off to the notorious Carlisle gaol.
Accepting the marriage and refusing to lose her new husband, the remarkable Mary Elisabeth sets about to save Diarmid. Using as her only asset her lovely young body, she sells herself -- to a colonel, a judge, a sea captain & many others -- for money, for news about his whereabouts, for the papers necessary to secure his release. Her unremitting quest for her husband takes her from England to America, down through dangerous terrain to Georgia.
As for Diarmid, death has no more terror for him than for most Highlanders. Life as a prisoner is far worse than execution -- from which he has a last minute, and undesired, reprieve. There is living death in the hellish jail, then deportation to America, where he is sold as an indentured slave to a Georgian plantation owner -- the worst of all fates for a man who can break but cannot bend« less