Her Outlaw
Geralyn Dawson
HQN, May 2007, $6.99
ISBN: 0373771967

In 1897 in London Emma McBride Tate wonders how a wild woman like her could ever learn to be sedate. The Fort Worth resident knows the townsfolk back home still consider her as the ring leader of the McBride Menaces. The widow knows when her spouse died from pneumonia, the menace died with her. Still she thinks once a menace, always a menace so Emma seduces Highland visitor Alistair "Dair" MacRae. However, when he slinks away with her necklace she comes after him with wild abandon holding up his carriage to recover her necklace.

Dair wants Emma, but needs her necklace that he assumes has ties to the death of his mother. However, though he desires the passionate hell-cat, he fears telling her the truth about his quest as someone close to her may have been involved with what he believes is the murder of his mom. Still as Emma sheds her respectability, she believes she is the one to destroy the McBride bad luck curse as she has found love; now all she needs is to persuade the Scot and find the Sisters' Treasure, unaware that someone has plans to keep the negative streak alive with her death

The final round of the Menaces historical romances is a delightful tale of love with a touch of the paranormal caused by Ariel's curse. The storyline is classic McBride bad luck though Emma dears to flaunt Victorian society with her seduction. Readers will enjoy the chief menace's romance with the Scot who steals first her necklace and then her heart with this fitting and wonderful climax to fun, late-nineteenth-century romances.

Harriet Klausner