Wild and Wicked In Scotland by Melody Thomas historical romance author Avon Books Avon Publishing

Melody Thomas ~ Three times reviewer nominated RomanticTimes Bookclub, Historical Winner WISRWA, Write Touch Reader's Award and Holt Medaliion Winner.

Top Pick 4 1/2 stars - Romantic Times Bookclub ~~“Thomas fills the pages with intrigue, passion, emotional intensity, duplicity and adventure in this page-turning romance”. ~~Joan Hammond

Award of Excellence~~"...Thomas's strikingly passionate romance will give readers butterflies..." Cheryl Jeffries, Heartstring Reviews.

A five Rose read!! ~~“A real page turner. This book has everything...adventure, intrigue, sex, romance...sex. Need I say more? Melody Thomas delivers on all counts and then some. I loved this book. You have a best seller that will sit proudly on your keeper shelf.” ~Debbie, A Romance review.

“WILD AND WICKED IN SCOTLAND is a fabulous read! Melody Thomas has written a page turner.”
~New York Times Bestselling author, Cathy Maxwell

“Ms. Thomas blends sizzling romance into a plot filled with intrigue. I highly recommend Wild and Wicked in Scotland and eagerly anticipate the next book in this riveting new series.” ~Sandra Brill, Romance Reviews Today

“Passion, adventure and intrigue make this Victorian romance spellbinding.” ~Suan Wilson, Fresh Fiction

“Jam-packed full of action, and romance, Wild and Wicked in Scotland is definitely one exciting read for the keeper shelf. Magnificent Romance.” ~Myshelf.com

“Thomas is quickly becoming an author I don’t want to miss and this effort is one of her best. Wild and Wicked in Scotland is exciting, engaging and filled with sexy, romantic exploits and a strong plot line to boot.” ~ Shirley Lyons, The Romance Reader

“WILD AND WICKED IN SCOTLAND is a fast-moving romantic adventure. A fast, delightful read...”
~Jennifer Harden, The Romance Reader Connection

Devlyn St Clair first noticed the woman who’d entered the inn from his place next to the window. He sat sideways, buttressed against the wooden bench, one boot propped on the seat as he awaited the mail coach to Edinburgh. Wearing a large floppy hat low over his eyes, he felt like something between a criminal and a half-eaten rodent the cat dragged inside the noisy inn. Lat night, he’d managed to change into laborer’s attire, clothing he’d stolen from a farmhouse before he crossed over into Scotland, but he had not shaved in seven days.

A bout of heavy rain had brought the women and children who had been waiting outside to the fire inside the common room. The sound of a carriage limping into town had been what had awoken him, as he realized he’d fallen asleep. He didn’t know how long he had slumbered. Minutes maybe. Hours perhaps. It was more than he’d slept in days.

Pulling his hat low, he watched the new arrivals as one who observed people for a living, and found himself unable to look away as a woman entered through the heavy oaken door. There was nothing immodest about her long-sleeved jacket. She was bandbox polished right down to her buttery-soft gloves. Spine ramrod-straight, she handed her cloak to the red haired girl beside her to hang on a peg. Yards of plush blue velvet gathered in a bustle fell like a layered waterfall down her backside. He might not have stared at all if she had been dressed like the other women present or had not been so tall. Or if the younger man standing beside her were not carrying a huge wooden case that looked to be holding, of all things, a cello. That alone was worthy of a second glance as the trio entered the common room.

But her height kept him staring when he would have otherwise dismissed the slightly anomalous scene. His gaze followed her movement across the crowded room. At two inches over six feet, he was considered tall. The top of her head would reach his lips, which made her statuesque for a woman.

And everything about her radiated sensuality, though he could see not an inch of flesh beneath the copious layers of fabric. It poured from her in the flare of her hips, the curve of her breasts, the way she flowed as she spoke to the man sitting behind the lattice cage selling seats for the next coach to Edinburgh. Watching her from beneath his floppy hat brim, he let his eyes follow the march of tiny pearl buttons up her bodice to where the carnal trail ended beneath a tiny bow at her throat. He frowned when his perusal was halted by a wide-brimmed hat and black veil over her face.

With a quiet oath that reflected his self-disgust, Devlyn pulled a timepiece from his pocket. The coach was already two hours late.

He returned the watch to his pocket, shoved his hat lower, rested his head on the back of the bench and closed his eyes. The velvet woman’s presence remained at the periphery of his awareness as his consciousness picked out her voice over the din humming around him. She was speaking in French, her melodious tone perfect for the lilt of the language, but it was not her native tongue. Nor was she British.

His eyes still closed, Devlyn noted his beard itched as he tried to think about something other than inviting her upstairs for a quick go-around on a soft, comfortable bed.

The room was suddenly too hot. His shoulder ached like blazes. The surgeon in Carlysle had done a fair job sewing up his injury after his little, deadly escapade the other side of the border last night. He knew he was feverish, which could account for his sudden delirium and preoccupation with the woman. He thought about going outside away from the noise. Or letting a room and sleeping for the night. But each thing he thought of doing cancelled out the thought before and he ended up doing nothing, except opening his eyes. His hooded glance took in Miss Prim’s veiled profile, even as her head turned and he suddenly found himself trapped within her gaze.

Cassie Sheridan abruptly returned her attention to the man sitting behind the ticket teller cage. A shudder ran through her. Her heart racing, she lowered her voice in alarm. “Surely you are mistaken,” she whispered in English because the obtuse man behind the cage could not understand French. She didn’t like speaking English. Everyone picked out her accent from the first syllable, and a woman on the run did not betray her identity if she could help it. “There must be someone else in this room with whom I may speak.”

“Mr. Holt be the only single seat I have sold on the coach, lass,” he said in a slight Scottish burr, then politely pointed to the woman sitting near the warmth of the fireplace. “Perhaps, ye’d rather ask that mother and her three wee bairns. Or the elderly couple eating lunch to give up their seats to ye, instead.”

The room smelled of unwashed bodies and boar roasting in the next room. The combination made her queasy, and she dabbed a floral scented handkerchief beneath her nose. No doubt somewhere in the world the sun shone brightly on happy, smiling people, but not here in this part of the border country. The rains caused havoc on the roads. The bridge had been closed ten miles back, forcing the coach in which she’d been riding to take a detour just as they’d crossed into Scotland. A little dirt and grit never hurt anyone, her grandmother used to tell her, but her grandmother had never visited the Borderlands during a spring deluge.

Reluctantly, Cassie turned her head and found Mr. Holt still sitting with one knee raised on the bench beside the window, one wrist propped on his upraised knee. A black cloak draped to the side revealed ragged homespun garments. The light streaming in from the window behind him cast his face in shadow beneath the brim of an unflattering hat, but she could feel his eyes on her. She was glad for the veil covering her face. At least it provided a miniscule barrier.

She’d found it easier to travel with her face veiled. Her dress was so dark blue it looked nearly black in the shadows. People thought she was traveling as a widow, and she was not of a mind to correct that assumption. Men paid her more respect as a French widow than as a single American woman traveling with her two servants.

That was not acceptable. “It’s important I be on this coach,” she explained, because he clearly did not understand she could not remain here. “I’ve already telegraphed my friend in Edinburgh to expect me by the end of the week.”

“Then might I suggest if ye wish to go to Edinburgh ye ask Mr. Holt for his seat.” With that haughty pronouncement, he shut his little window, as if she couldn’t continue talking to him over the metal grate that wrapped around his cubicle of a desk.

Tugging nervously on the netting covering her face, Cassie groaned silently. She had not come this far to be stranded in some godforsaken village that lacked the simplest modern convenience. Not when she had defied her father and run away.

He’d understood nothing of her need to taste a little freedom. But she’d left anyway just before dawn a week ago and boarded the train to Manchester. Knowing her father had probably telegraphed ahead, she had switched trains in Northampton then embarked on the vehicle of conveyance least likely to be followed. She’d been traveling for days over bumpy roads and overcrowded carriages, only to have her coach diverted to this town at the last moment.

But Cassie wanted to experience real life, even if it meant suffering a little along the way, or facing the reality her father might choose never to speak to her again. She had no desire to add to the scandal the arrogant Lord Hampstead had already caused both families by failing to appear at his own betrothal ball, but if she decided not to return by summer’s end, then so be it. She wanted to travel, to see her friend, to experience the world in her own way without fear of some wretched calamity befalling her, and refused to allow anyone or any circumstance to end her adventure before she’d even managed to push beyond the suffering part. She needed desperately just to leave her life behind her.

Cassie held to her place a moment longer, but with renewed determination building a fire beneath her feet, she bravely approached Mr. Holt, moving toward him as one moved toward a stray hound. She’d learned well enough to exercise caution the first time she’d tried to pet a strange dog she had seen once in an alley while with her grandmother. At five years old, she’d learned her first lesson about the very real dangers of the world.

A subtle frown grew on his bearded countenance as she drew closer to the window. Short of holding her hand out for this man to sniff there was nothing she could do about it.

His hair, she noticed when she drew nearer, shown nearly black and touched his nape from beneath his floppy hat, and by no means was it thin. She gleaned from the shape of his jaw and mouth he might be handsome if one had a penchant for scruffy, flea-bitten men. Her heartbeat fluttered as she stopped at the table and waited expectantly for him to rise. No manners, she added to her assessment.

He did not stand or pull out her chair as any gentleman would. “I would have but a moment of your time, sir.” She didn’t bother speaking in French, considering he looked barely capable of proper speech as it was. Kneading her reticule, she took a seat at his table without an invitation; since it was clear she wasn’t going to receive one. “I was told that perhaps--”

She felt a moment’s alarm, but resisted informing him the pretext was meant as a disguise.

“Remove the veil,” he said, not just in any English but a smoothly spoken American dialect.

The last thing she wanted was to remove the barrier between this man’s eyes and her face. “I’m an American, Mr. Holt,” she answered without removing the veil. “The gentleman at the desk told me your name and said I should speak to you concerning my current dilemma.”

He remained sitting sideways on the bench behind the table, one knee drawn up to his chest. “If you are going to sit here, I want to see with whom I am speaking,” he said.

On any other occasion, Cassie would have been affronted by such boldness, but she needed his seat on the coach.

After a moment’s hesitation, she reached a gloved hand to her hat rim and unfastened the pins, frustrated to feel her fingers trembled slightly. She lowered the veil, laid it on the table and raised her chin. His regard flickered slightly. If he wanted to look, let him look. Without the veil, she could better see the man’s eyes anyway and, as they held hers, she gazed back.

His brown eyes were so dark they looked nearly black in the shadow of his hat rim. She saw nothing else in his expression, yet she’d never felt so undressed in her life. The sensation startled her, then angered her. For a moment she couldn’t help her gaze traveling to his lips. Lips that were smiling slightly.

“I am Mrs. Ambrose,” she said stiffly, using her mother’s maiden name, but he must have sensed her hesitation and guessed she was lying because his eyes narrowed. No longer hooded they held a spark of something she could not name for certain, but it touched her beneath her clothes and heightened her senses.

“I wish to purchase your seat on the conveyance to Stow. I need to connect to the coach leaving for Edinburgh from there.”

“As you might have noted this village is somewhat isolated and crowded with stranded passengers. Unfortunately, the weather also diverted my coach or I would not be sitting here, Mr. Holt. I need four seats today. Yours--”

“Who else besides those two are traveling with you?” He nodded his chin toward Mary and Frank her two faithful servants.

Realizing Mr. Holt had been watching her since she’d entered the common room, she turned to glance over her shoulder, and smiled briefly at the pair to reassure them.

“I see only three of you,” he said as she returned her attention to his face. “And you do not look wide enough to take up two seats, Mrs. Ambrose.”

“It isn’t for us. I need a seat for my Lady Rose. I couldn’t bear to see her tied on top of the coach where she would get wet. Or worse, fall off. I could never replace her.”

“She isn’t just a cello, Mr. Holt. She is a Stradivarius. One does not install a Stradivarius atop a mail coach, especially in the rain. She belonged to my grandmother.”

“Let me understand this. You want me to give up my seat for a musical instrument?”

Everything was for sale and anyone could be swayed by money. Her father had taught her that much. Cassie opened her reticule prepared to buy him off. “I need four seats. I will be glad to pay you more than the fare you paid.”

To prove her point, she shoved a coin across the table, sure he would be pleased for the wealth she offered him for his one measly seat in a crowded public conveyance. “This should compensate you for your trouble, Mr. Holt.”

“Are you sure you are not overpaying me, Mrs. Ambrose? I would not wish to take undue advantage of your generosity.”

Cassie perched stiffly on the edge of her seat, aware of the subtle insult to her intelligence, much as she now realized she had been insulting him since she sat down. She was also aware that despite her family’s massive wealth and her own extensive classical education, she knew very little about such practical matters as foreign currency or what a room in a rundown inn cost. She lost some composure. She’d begun to fear maybe she had not brought enough currency to get everyone to Edinburgh where she was supposed to meet Sally Ann’s brother.

But she was relatively sure the coin she presented him was worth more than his seat on the coach. “I cannot give you more, Mr. Holt, or I would.”

He angled his head to one side. “Do you want to explain to me why someone of your obvious station is riding a mail coach to anywhere?”

Cassie took the insult with judiciousness. Most people thought her perpetually singular anyway. But for some reason it bothered her this man did as well. “I have never gone anywhere without my cello, Mr. Holt.”

Finally, he leaned one elbow. “Are you insane, lady? Does bedlam ring a bell? St. Mary of Bethlehem? Madhouse?”

She’d had enough of his humor at her expense, and it nettled her sorely that a man who smelled of brandy and horses had put her on the defensive. “If you were the least cultured, you would understand the value of that which I am speaking. That coin will purchase you a bath and board for another night and a seat to Edinburgh later,” she said. “From the looks of you, you could use the money.”

He laughed outright. But his contemplation of her remained steady if not amused. Leaning nearer, he lowered his voice as if they were sharing a secret. “Are you running from some irate lover?” he asked.

She gave him a level look when inside she wanted to hit him. Her hands knotting in her lap, she debated adding another coin to the first just to change the topic, but decided she had no more to spare. “Surely, it would be no hardship for you to take another coach. There is one that leaves tomorrow.” She leaned forward. “The cello means a lot to me. Lady Rose will ruin atop the carriage in the rain,” she said, aware that she was now pleading, and hating that the grubby charlatan would reduce her to begging.

“Then maybe you should have thought of that before bringing the damned thing on a public coach, Mrs. Ambrose.”

He came to his feet, his movement strangely primal in grace. His height drew her gaze up to his face, less concealed beneath the hat brim now that he was standing. The daylight opened his features to all her senses. Even with the closely cropped beard, he was more than handsome, she realized with shock--and vaguely familiar, though she was positive she would never have had an occasion to meet someone like him.

He wore no neckcloth and his homespun shirt was unbuttoned at his throat. A long cloak hid his shoulders, yet framed their width. Everything about him cried duplicity, for the man beneath the clothes was not that image she’d first perceived. He did not possess a simple mind or background.

Her appraisal of the faint corded tendons of his neck came to a stuttering halt on his face when she realized he was watching her study him. Dismayed to be caught gawking, she’d rendered herself speechless.

His amused eyes drifted over her features and touched her as tangibly as if he’d physically stroked her face. “Put the veil back on, Mrs. Ambrose.” Scraping the coin from the table, he brushed his shoulder against her arm.

It should have been possible to find an excuse for a man who had clearly experienced such a laborious upbringing handicapped by moral poverty, but there was something indefensible about impertinence.

But he had taken her hand and, pressing the farthing into her palm, silenced her thoughts. Their gazes came together and held. “Your cello may ride dry, Mrs. Ambrose.” He lifted her hand to his lips like a gentleman, but he smiled like a wolf. “And I can pay for my own bath, madam. Yours as well, if you wish to join me for the night.”

Cassie yanked her hand away as if burned, but could not hide the rush of heat to her face. She glowered at him in stunned outrage. “I would not dignify that invitation with an answer.”

“No?” he asked, humor glinting in his eyes. He seemed little concerned she had just rejected him. “You do not smell like a bouquet of roses either, madam.”

Then sweeping into a brief bow like a man born to the court, he walked slowly around her and said close to her ear. “I bid you good day, Mrs. Ambrose.”

Watching him weave a path through the crowded common room, his cloak flowing around him like wings, Cassie shivered, aware of him as she touched where his lips had pressed against her hand.

Tugging at the string on her reticule, she stopped a buxom chambermaid on her way upstairs. “I wish to have a bath sent up to Mr. Holt’s room. Scented,” she added, withdrawing three half-pennies and giving her the coin required.

The girl gave her an oblique look, her dark hair hugging her cheeks. “Will ye be wantin’ me to join him, mum?” She batted her blue eyes. “This is enough for more than a bath.”

Cassie removed two coins. “I only want him to have a bath,” she managed placidly, annoyed by the girl’s indefensible eagerness.

The girl sashayed away, dropping the coin down her blouse. She wore nothing beneath the flimsy garment. Cassie was surprised to see it didn’t drop to the floor.