Angel in My Bed
Melody Thomas
Avon, Apr 2006, $5.99, 384 pp.
ISBN: 006074233X

In 1873, David Donally is on his last mission for his country before retiring. He searches for stolen loot from a theft in India over nine years ago with the lone clue to its whereabouts a recently surfaced gem-laden earring. He questions Sheriff Skilling who sends his men to attack David. Afterward Skilling visits tall tough Lady Victoria Munro who realizes her past has found her. Instead of the booty he seeks, the earring leads David to the most beautiful woman he has ever known, his wife Meg Faraday, a woman he thought dead back in Calcutta.

Meg cannot believe her luck that the man she has avoided for years has found her and believes others will follow. David demands the truth of why she faked her death while Meg believes he betrayed their love when he pawned her to get at her father, a smuggler. Both still feel the heated attraction, but neither trusts the other. However, neither realizes that if they want to live, they need each other as someone else has plans for the treasure and killing an estranged couple is not a problem for this avaricious assailant.

ANGEL IN MY BED is an exhilarating, Victorian, romantic, suspense tale starring two individuals burned by love as each assumes the other betrayed their relationship. The story line is action-packed as both struggle against their feelings while reluctantly joining forces to seek the jewels and to stop an unknown culprit from succeeding in putting them six feet under. Melody Thomas provides a fine nineteenth-century thriller fueled by the distrustful lead couple needing one another to survive.

Harriet Klausner