He swears he will deliver her and her father back home to Spain but that he will soon come for her to marry her. She made no appearances, never gave an interview and only answered fan letters herself if they made an interesting historical point. 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.

At one point in the novel, she wishes she were a man so she could revenge Beauvallet properly--but there's no follow through of that thought. It is fascinating, reading her other books, not only her Regency romances or detective books (I haven't read the latter yet, but I am going to).

Although perhaps best known (and collected) for her Regency Romances, which were written with great attention to historical detail, she also wrote thrillers and detective fiction. En route he falls for the feisty and independent-minded Dominica, who is initially aloof but gradually comes to love him as well. Of course, Sir Nicholas falls instantly in love with the lady and against all odds escorts her and her father back to Spain, promising to come for her within a year and take her back to England as his wife. Their new home in Kratovo was an old Turkish house with a water supply that had been built in Roman times.

She does a lot of slapping when first brought aboard The Venture and gives plenty of haughty looks throughout the novel, but she is rather nonplussed once her cousin Don Diego has kidnapped her and has her at his mercy in a hunting lodge. He's a master at using deception and charm to lull his opponents into complacency and then seizing on whatever opportunities present themselves. After setting her and her father down in Spain, he makes a reckless promise - within the year he will brave the land of Spain itself to bring her home as his bride. According to Jennifer Kloester, Heyer's biographer, the novel's swashbuckling hero, Sir Nicholas Beauvallet, is in the line of those in the books of Baroness Orczy and Rafael Sabatini.

Get some beautiful actors on screen and the sudden love between Dominica and Nick might even become believable!

Spine has several smudges/stains, is heavily sunned, and with significant losses at head and tail of spine and also open scrapes in the center of spine - see photos. But it never materialized: even in the midst of Beauvallet's escape from 'prison', I was able to put the book down for a week.

Still, there were good characterizations, (I will admit to laughing at the greedy, but totally honest about it, aunt), and the swashbuckling was great. Two other characters that really stand out are Joshua, Beauvallet's valet, and Doña Beatrice, Dominica's aunt. Though written well before Errol Flynn made The Sea Hawk, I dare you to read this and >not< picture Flynn as dashing Nick Beauvallet.