This isn't your average eBook...

Have you ever read something in a novel and wished you could see a picture, find a definition, or learn more about it without having to look it up? Now you can! This special electronic book is enhanced with web links to information about Regency history, terms, and customs that will bring the world of Unmasked to life, all without leaving your screen.

Can innocent young widow Mari Osborne really be a murderess and the notorious leader of the Glory Girls highwaywomen?

Wickedly handsome Nick Falconer would stake his life on it! He's been sent from London to the tranquil English village of Peacock Oak to solve the murder of his cousin Rashleigh and unmask this female Robin Hood. But Nick never expected that Mari would be so intoxicatingly beautiful or so disturbingly luscious. Determined to have her--body, soul and secrets--at any cost, Nick sets out to seduce her with a passion that inflames them both.

But Mari holds much deeper, darker truths than Nick could ever imagine. Despite her fierce resistance, she can't stop her body from yearning for his touch. Can she hide her sinister past from him much longer? Or will trusting the one man she so desperately wants lead her straight to the hangman's noose?

Sometimes the nightmare would come to her in the depths of the darkness and she would wake cold and shaking, reaching for the comfort of the candle's light. Other times—this time—it caught her unawares, tricked her in that hour before daybreak when the summer light had already started to creep around the edges of the curtain.

She was going to die. She could not breathe. Her wrists were chafed raw from the rope that tied her to the cart and her legs ached intolerably from the long, stumbling miles. She could hear the rumble of the carriage wheels echoing in her head. Her skirt was ripped to shreds and her thighs were criss-crossed with wheals where Rashleigh had leaned from the carriage and plied his whip, laughing as she staggered in the mud. He had sworn to punish her for being seasick all the way from Russia to England. This was his revenge because he had wanted her --wanted to spend the entire voyage in bed with her, no doubt -- and instead of pleasuring him her body had thwarted him with her illness. He had told her that she disgusted him.

It was winter and the road was bad. Her feet were bare and blue with cold, her hands numb, her wrists torn. And there was murder in her heart. If Rashleigh gave her but one chance, if there was one single careless moment when his attention was diverted, then she would kill him. It was as simple as that.

But the moment never came. In her dream there was all the anger and the frustration and the pain almost past enduring but never the satisfaction of release. The darkness stretched before her endlessly with no promise of escape. She was a serf, a slave, nothing more than property. She was trapped forever.

Mari struggled awake. The remnants of the nightmare fled. She was lying in her huge bed in her cottage in Peacock Oak. It was light now and downstairs the servants were already awake and at work.

There was the rattle of china outside the door, then Jane's knock and the same words that she used each day, "Good morning, madam!"

"What a beautiful morning, madam!" Jane had placed the tea tray carefully on the bedside table and gone across to open the curtains. "It will be perfect for her grace's garden party and ball later."

"I hope so," Mari said. She sat up and reached for her wrap. Jane poured the tea from the tiny china pot. Strong tea was a proper Yorkshire custom, Jane had said proudly, when Mari had expressed her preference, little knowing that Mari's own tastes had been set years before in Russia...

"I was worrying last night that there might be a summer storm that would flatten all the flowers," Mari said now, "and all our work would be ruined."

"Not a bit of it," Jane said stoutly. "The garden will look beautiful, madam. So many of those lovely flowers you chose for her grace! Mr. Osborne would be so proud of the way you have kept his work alive." Her gaze went to the small portrait hanging on the wall at the side of Mari's bed.

"Ah, yes," Mari said. She smiled, stretched. "Dear Mr. Osborne."

She was very fond of the late Mr. Osborne. He had been the perfect husband, rich and kind. Sometimes even she almost forgot that Mr. Osborne was imaginary.

She had never told anyone that she was not a widow. A single woman living in a small village needed a respectable background and hers could not have been more scandalous. Mari had found it remarkably pleasing to create the sort of husband she had required. Which was good because she thought that she never, ever wanted a physical relationship with a man again.

For the first 18 years of her life Nicola lived in Yorkshire, within a stone’s throw of the moors that had inspired the Brontë sisters to write Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights. One of her grandfathers was a poet, and her family contained teachers and avid readers who filled the house with books. With such a background it was impossible for Nicola not to become a bookworm.

Nicola went to school in a historic building that had originally been the dower house of a stately home. It was the sort of school that taught girls how to find a rich husband and how to get in and out of a Rolls-Royce gracefully.

Unfortunately Nicola did not pay enough attention to the bit about the rich husband and has therefore never had the chance to practice the bit with the Rolls- Royce. She was too busy reading. It was also at school that Nicola developed her love of history, English literature, and French, due to some truly inspirational teachers.

Meanwhile, Nicola spent her evenings reading piles of romances and historical novels and watching costume dramas with her grandmother. Her grandparents were very influential to her and also taught her canasta, ballroom dancing, and how to grow rhubarb, all of which she is determined to incorporate in a historical romance one day.

At 18 Nicola went south to study history at London University and during her holidays did a variety of jobs, from sticking price tags on shoes in a factory to serving refreshments on a steam railway. When she left college she had to settle for something far less interesting in order to earn a living and worked as an administrator in a number of different universities. She moved to Somerset and lived for seven years in a cottage haunted by the ghost of a cavalier.

Nicola met her future husband while she was at university, although it took her four years to realize that he was special and more than just a friend. Her husband, being so much more perceptive, had worked this out much sooner but eventually an understanding was reached.

This lack of perception also meant that Nicola did not realize for years that she was meant to be a writer. She wrote bits and pieces of novels in her spare time but never finished any of them. Eventually, she sent in the first three chapters of a Regency romance to Mills and Boon and, although they were rejected, she found she had become so addicted to writing that she could not stop. Happily, her third attempt was accepted and she has never looked back.

Nicola loves to hear from her readers and can be contacted by email at ncornick@madasafish.com or via her web site, http://members.madasafish.com/~ncornick/.