Billie's Kiss

Chatto and Windus, 2002. Foxing and yellowing at page edges

With an Edwardian twist on The Tempest, and all the surprising, earthy and magical qualities of her successful The Vintner's Luck, Knox's equally irresistible new novel is set on the remote, divided Scottish island of Kissack and Skilling, one half of which looks historically and geographically towards Catholic Ireland, the other towards the Protestant north and Scandinavia. In the spring of 1903 a ship explodes as it docks on the island, drowning many of the passengers and crew in the icy waters of Stolnsay harbour. Young, strawberry-blonde-haired Billie Paxton is among the only survivors. Clumsy, illiterate and suddenly alone, Billie will not say why, before the explosion, she jumped from ship to shore, and so falls under the immediate suspicion of her fellow passenger, Murdo Hesketh, and his cousin and employer, Lord Hallowhulme, who owns the island - and has controversial plans for improving the lives of its inhabitants. As she attempts to come to terms with her now uncertain future, Billie acquaints herself with the peculiar inhabitants of Kiss Castle: Lord Hallowhulme's beautiful wife and worldly children; Geordie Betler, a spinsterish gentleman's gentleman who wants to discover why his brother drowned; and the fierce, fair-haired Murdo, who inspires in Billie equal amounts of rage and attraction...