Twilight Secrets: Twilight Secrets

``Brown eyes wherein golden sparks appeared.'' And reappeared. Repeatedly. Rogers follows her Chanting trilogy and The Keepsake with a medieval romance that falls prey to almost every cliche. The plot is good: in early 12th-century England, Elysia, heiress to a rich fiefdom, is given as ward to Mark of Valbau, aka the Black Wolf, King Henry I's champion. Elysia is miffed not only because Mark now has charge of her property and herself, but also because she already has a fiance, the hard-hearted-and as it turns out, traitorous-Gervaise of Kelby Keep. Not even the best plot, however, can hold a reader without period description, character development and narrative momentum. Failing to supply these, Rogers also succumbs to overheated prose (a short lovemaking scene yields burning, searing, blazing, hot, burning, warm, burn, feverish, scorching, fire, flame, sparks, warmth); painful metaphors (``Dark lashes slowly lifted to reveal a silver lure that drew Elysia helplessly into the net of his incredible attraction'') and coy pseudo-chivalric dialogue (``I will give you a foretaste of all the honeyed delights waiting to be savored by lovers''). (Nov.)