Amanda Rose by Karen Robards

Urged on by the guards, he mounted the rough wooden planks, his movements slow and awkward because of the confining chains. Over their clanking, he suddenly became aware of a swelling roar. Surprised, Matt looked around and down. A milling, unruly crowd stretched around the gallows like an endless expanse of sea around a tiny island.The sight stopped him in his tracks. He had not been aware of them before, wished he had not become aware of them now. They were staring up at him, a featureless blur made up of hundreds of faces, come to watch him die. Their mouths shouted obscenities; their eyes screamed hate.

“That’s him. That’s the one. Grayson—bloody murderer.”

Matt stared at them. Missiles thrown by the crowd began slicing through the air around him, rotten tomatoes and eggs and even rocks. The guards, as caught up in the maelstrom of refuse as he was, cursed viciously and hurried him up the stairs. Matt did nothing to hinder them. Every ounce of his concentration was suddenly focused on fighting down the terror that tiptoed icily up and down his spine. He scarcely felt the rock that bounced off his left temple, leaving a darkening bruise and a trickle of crimson in its wake.

Amanda Rose by Karen Robards

The novel is set in the 1840s. It opens with our hero taken to the gallows to be hanged. For a crime he did not commit. Matt Grayson is a ship & merchant owner from New Orleans and travels to England. During a business deal Matt was drugged, later to be woken up to police arresting him for the murder of a well known family in England. Somehow he escapes the hangman's rope but gets shot shot during the escape. He ends up on a beach down below a convent. Hungry, sick, injured.

Amanda Rose has been sent to the convent five years ago by her half-brother after their father dies. She is almost eighteen now and he has arranged her marriage and made a deal that he would get her inheritance after the marriage is thru. Amanda Rose does not wish to marry the person her half-brother has selected for but she also does not wish to end up in the convent. 

Unknown to the nuns, she escapes to the beach at night to calm her troubled thoughts. That's when she meets Matt Grayson. She takes him to a hidden cave and nurses him back to health. But he is caught and shot and presumed dead. And Amanda Rose is to be married in few days time.

Matt Grayson is very much alive, rescued by his brother. And he thinks Amanda led the police to him. His brother Zeke kidnaps Amanda at the behest of Matt, who is hell bent on taking revenge. He takes her to New Orleans....

The novel started out with the scene of Matt being taken to the gallows. A very harrowing experience. When he escapes, the reader breathes easy. Amanda is a spunky heroine. A fighter. There is good chemistry between them. Yet I found Matt a jerk in the second half. Zeke, his brother is a very likable character. There were moments, I wanted to kill the hero but I couldn't put it down until I finished it. Go for if you like a forceful hero as is the norm in historical romances.