Beauvallet: Gossip, scandal and an unforgettable Regency romance

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I should acknowledge that things did pick up once Beauvallet got his ass to Spain, but it wasn't a true take off? Seizing the chance, she tried to kill the hateful pirate -- but as he took her arm and held it she found herself strangely captured by his boyish smile.

Upper edge of back jacket panel has two closed vertical tears of 1/4", one with adjacent diagonal crease of 1/4" and the other with an adjacent diagonal crease of 1 5/8". It was a little hard to get inside the character’s heads at first, but once I learned who they were It was very easy to relate to them.What she does is always right, always highly flavored of her period, so that in some odd fashion the whole era is actually alive before you, and that with few descriptions. Travelling as a Frenchman provides Beauvallet with a convenient disguise in a rigidly Catholic land where the English are abhorred as Protestant heretics. He is more daring than clever; the reader is told about his thinking rather than showing the workings out. Having arrived in Madrid, he learns that Dominica's father has died and that she is now under the protection of her uncle, Don Rodriguez. On one such occasion he is challenged by a Spanish ship which he quickly takes over, on board the Spanish ship is a Spanish nobleman and his beautiful feisty daughter Dominica.

Dominica is spirited, fiesty and intelligent, quick-witted and interesting - it is not hard to see why Beauvallet would fall for her so quickly. For several years Georgette Heyer has been proving herself a master of romantic fancy-dress fiction. This was necessary to provide a reason for Beauvallet to travel into Spain, where certain death awaited him if discovered.

The opening naval battle and ship-boarding bears a great resemblance to the opening scenes of Flynn's 1940 film 'The Sea Hawk'. I have even read a few random pages from Devil's Cub (one of my favorite Heyer's books) to check if I am not exaggerating. There he meets the young Chevalier Claude de Guise, on a mission to deliver a secret message to the Spanish King. Mad Nicholas' to his friends, 'Scourge of Spain' to the enemy, Sir Nicholas Beauvallet's exploits on the high seas have made him an equal to Sir Francis Drake and a favourite of the Queen.