The Trouble with Highlanders

Wine delivers a steamy fourth installment of her historical Highlander sheet-sizzlers (Highland Heat). In this bodice-busting take on 15th-century arranged-marriage customs in the wilds of northernmost Scotland, Wine opens with a suggestive relationship interruptus. Spunky Daphne MacLeod went willingly to the luxurious bed of powerful Norris Sutherland, heir to the pre-eminent earldom of Sutherland, to make herself a “fallen woman” and escape marriage to a man who loved someone else. Three months later, despite—or because of—staying in a rigidly run convent, Daphne can’t get Norris out of her disturbingly libidinous dreams. Norris is suffering, too; since that rapturous encounter, he’s lost interest in the bevy of serving maids ready to satisfy his every need. Though Wine’s predictable plot provides only the flimsiest of excuses to delay a climactic Highland marriage, her expertise at vicarious titillation allows the lovers plenty of opportunity to exercise feverish imaginations. Agent: Jill Marsal, Marsal Lyon Literary Agency. (Oct.)