Miss Lydia and the Privateer

Lydia Penhallow is nineteen, a rector's daughter, and has never been farther than Penzance. She keeps the parish ledger, tells the truth even when a lie would be kinder, and has just found forty pounds in the vestry from a giver who signs no name.

Then she follows a groan down into the church vault and finds a wounded stranger with a pistol. She does not scream. She asks if he has a surgeon. By the next dinner at Pendarves Hall he is Gabriel Tregarthen, Earl of Carnow, master of the privateer brig Morwenna, and he looks straight through her like a stranger.

Dragoons are searching the coast. A press gang is working Chapel Street. The riding surveyor, Silas Cardew, is courteous, patient and far too interested in her father's church. And the forty pounds comes in the week before every convoy sails. When Lydia crosses the cliffs in the dark to warn the Earl, a French privateer takes her instead, and she must learn what her ledger is worth, and what a dangerous man will do to bring her home.

A swoon-worthy Regency adventure of danger, honour and a very clean, very hot kind of love.