The novel is a set in a powerful landscape which became familiar in Radcliffe's later work, with complex clan feuds and mysterious romantic intrigues played out against a backdrop of ruined medieval castles and rugged Scottish coastlines. Years ago, when Young Earl Osbert of Castle Athlin was a boy, his father was ambused and slain by Baron Malcolm of Dunbayne. Now Osbert has come into his majority, and in the company of a sturdy and heroic young peasant named Alleyn he's gone to avenge his father's murder. What waits for them at the castle of Dunbayne is not vengeance but a fate that neither one of them imagines: not just conquest or defeat, but a terrible challenge -- and the romance of a lifetime.