The Wizard's Daughter by Catherine Coulter

Rosalind de la Fontaine doesn't know where she really came from, or her name, or even how old she really is. Her "uncle", Ryder Sherbrooke rescued her when she was beaten nearly to death, although there was something unusual about how he found her. It seems he was led to her by a strange voice and quality of light. When she was rescued, she was nearly dead, and at first, they despaired of her life, but she was given copious medical attention and rallied, and was eventually adopted into the family alongside the Sherbrooke's real son Grayson. She didn't speak for six months, and then she only sang a verse to a song which seems to enchant everyone who hears it.

In 1835, the Sherbrookes give her a season in London. She is now a young woman with red hair that puts Titian's color to shame, and bright blue eyes. At one of the balls, she meets Nicolas Vail, the Earl of Mountjoy, newly returned from Macau. Common wisdom says he is penniless and has come seeking a rcih heiress. But Rosalinde doesn't have that much money. Nicolas is charmed by Rosalind and asks to accompany her to a local fair. During the fair, her brother Grayson purchases a rare volume, The Rules of the Pale, from a book vendor who promptly disappears from his place, and, more slowly, from the memories of the merchants nearby.

When the time comes to read the book, it seems to be written in an impenetrable code... that only Rosalind can read. Why? No one is sure, least of all, Rosalind. And she can read it as easily as reading English. Nicolas is amazed, not the least of which because his grandfather has a copy of the same book. And his grandfather had a reputation as a wizard. Or being mad, which some assume is the same thing. Nicholas listens as Rosalind reads the book, while Grayson transcribes her words. The story tells of a 16th century wizard named Sarimund, who visited a place outside our world and time. Rosalind views it as an allegory, although she has had dreams about a character mentioned in the book, Rennat, the wizard of the east. The last part of the book, although it seems to be in the same code, is utterly impenetrable to Rosalind, and she cannot say why.

Rosalind has fallen in love with Nicolas, but his family, namely, his stepmother and two stepbrothers, hates and resents him. His father, stirred by his stepmother's resentment, cut him off penniless when he was only a child, and concieved a real, lasting hatred for him. His two older step-brothers, Richard and Lancelot, were raised with hatred for him as practically their mother's milk. Now that Nicolas is fixing on Rosalind as a wife (and threatening their position by engendering an heir), they first attempt to warn her off, which Rosalind deflects easily, and then attempt to kidnap her, but instead get the wrong girl, Grayson's date. When they realize they have the wrong one, they send her back, but Lorelai is no fainting miss, and she sees part of the crest on the coach door, which allows Nicolas to discover who had her kidnapped. He goes to visit his brothers and pounds some sense into Richard, the oldest, telling him that if he tries such a stunt again, Nicolas will kill him, and Lance, too.

Due to the threat of the kidnapping, Nicolas and Rosalind's wedding is moved up, and he invites his stepmother and stepbrothers to the wedding. His stepmother and older two stepbrothers are surly and drink too much when they attend, but his youngest stepbrother, Aubrey, a scholar at Oxford, has no animus towards Nicholas, and is merry and happy, much to the distaste of his mother and older brothers. In addition, Aubrey has the same coloring as Rosalind, which seems unusual in his family.

When Nicolas and Rosalind head to his manor house, they find that the spirit of Nicholas' grandfather has inhabited the place, singing in the library, and it has chased off a good deal of the house's workers, who find it very uncanny indeed. Rosalind and Nicholas enjoy their wedding night greatly, and the next few days are spent settling in. Nicholas finds his grandfather's copy of The Rules of the Pale, but it is different from the one Grayson purchased, and seems not as long. In the course of investigating the house, and the ghost, they find that the Ghost is not Nicolas's grandfather after all, but Jared Vail, sea captain and progenitor of the Vail line. He sings them the first two verses of a song, which verse that Rosalind sang so long ago completes.

While they convince the servants to return to the house, Rosalind starts translating the version of The Rules of the Pale owned by Nicholas's grandfather. It is different, very different, and almost seems to be another book entirely, speaking of the witches and Wizards that make the Pale their home, as well as the treachery of Epona, the wizard Sarimund was chosen to sleep with and engender a child with. He stayed with her for six days, and then chose to leave. But in the real world, only a single night seems to have passed. There is more in the book, but the pages seem stuck together, unable to be parted.

More mundane concerns begin to press them at this point. First, Rosalind finds out that Nicholas dreamed of her long before they met, and he was told she was his debt that he had to pay. Rosalind thinks that Nicholas married her only for that reason, and convinces herself that he doesn't really love her. She tries to spend the night apart from him, only to have a vision of Sarimund, which catapults her into perfect whiteness. Nicholas breaks into the room where she is sleeping and finds her all white, even her hair, holding a jeweled dagger which drips white blood. When he wakes her, however, she slowly recovers, and the white blood disappears from the dagger.

She hadn't had the dagger before she went to bed, it being locked in a case downstairs, and so it somehow came to her. More frightening is her vision, in which Sarimund told her he would see her soon. He also told her the rest of the book would unlock for her now, and it does, but they are interrupted by the arrival of his stepmother and stepbrothers, with the news that Richard had a dream of Rosalind cutting his heart out in a pagan-style sacrifice, and that he should get rid of her before she kills him. Nicholas disdains to do this, but his acceptance of Richard's dream does much to redeem him in Richard's eyes.

Finally, Nicholas and Rosalind realize that she has been being groomed all her life for one task, and it is Nicholas' job to help and support her. When they are taken bodily to the Pale, will they be able to survive and get the job done, despite having never wielded any sort of magic before?

I found this book hard to get into at the beginning, because the language spoken by the characters seemed strangely... stilted. But as I continued to read, the story came out and grabbed me. The longer I read, the easier it was for me to ignore the stiltedness of the language and simply read for the plot. Neither of the characters really grabbed me, it was more the plot that kept me reading. Nicholas is standard Romancelandia hero and Rosalind is more or less a straight Romancelandia heroine, with nothing that really stood out in their characterization to make me think any different. Of course, there are the usual family troubles from one side, and the "big misunderstanding" to keep them apart, although in this case, it thankfully didn't last very long. I was curious as to why Nicholas didn't simply tell her that he had fallen in love with her anyway when she accused him of marrying her for the debt.

In any case, the idea of both Nicholas and Rosalind being magicians is more interesting than the characters themselves, at least to me. Now, I admit I am slightly turned off by Catherine Coulter because I read her first novel, "Devil's Embrace" and it was so unsexy and morally disgusting to me that I wanted to go out and permanently geld the hero and pay for the heroine to get a brain implanted in her skull, as the one God gave her wasn't working. Reading "The Wizard's Daughter" has only very slightly improved my opinion of her.