Bride of the Dullahan — Sharon Wagner

She was betrothed to a demon that jealousy guarded her secret...

There had to be a way, I told mystery firmly. There must be something that I could do to free myself before Oliver played out the final act of his dark drama--but what? The confusion in my mind began to slowly take shape and the shape it assumed was that of Henry Sandiford.

“You've more lives than a cat, Sheila, my girl.”

By the time she turned eighteen, Sheila Mattingly had survived more changes of fortune than most people encounter in a lifetime. An abandoned child rescued from an Irish battlefield by a kindly English captain, she had been raised on his estate. Then when the captain died, she had been named his heir.

But the appearance of the captain's odious nephew again reverses her fortunes, as he begins a very clever campaign to wrest the fortune from her -- accusing her of witchcraft. Suddenly, the young heiress is thrown into a barbaric English prison and escapes the gallows only by assuming the identity of a prostitute.

Another twist of fate sends her to a prison colony in Australia where at last she discovers a new life of freedom, wilderness…and love. But she is still determined to regain her rightful inheritance. And yet another obstacle to her happiness remains -- she has learned from an old Irish friend that her uncanny knack of survival is due in large part to her “dullahan,” the ancient and powerful pagan spirit assigned by her ancestors to protect her virtue at any cost…even against the man she loves.