Skye Cameron by Phyllis Whitney (Coronet, 1974)

One of my "Green Shed" finds!

'No woman could ever be indifferent to such a man'

'A great brute of a man' they called him... 'uncouth, rude'.  They said he had been in prison, that he was a murderer ... and worse.  But the moment Skye Cameron caught her first glimpse of Justin Law, her heart beat uncontrollably.  She knew herself to be irrevocably drawn to the big, intense man with the mysterious past.

Skye Cameron was a redhead, strong-willed and impetuous.  But when she challenged respectable New Orleans society she was forced to defy the world she knew for a love she could not admit.

'A story ripe with the adventures of a flaming-haired heroine who is at leas kissing-kin to Scarlett O'Hara'

New York Times

Well the cover gets one thing right anyway--the heroine's hair is read.  Sort of.

But that is the only thing that appears to be right about the cover.  The novel takes place in genteel New Orleans in the late nineteenth century--the heroine is apparently wandering around a burning plantation looking disheveled and wearing nothing but her shift.  She looks a bit jaundiced, too, with that yellow complexion, and her expression says "Night of the Living Dead" to me more than "defying the world for love".

Also the hero, that "great brute of a man" is missing from the cover.  Make of that what you will...