Beauvallet: Gossip, scandal and an unforgettable Regency romance

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Then most of the story is how he gets a fake identity, travels to Spain, gets captured, escapes, and what he does when he finds Dominique. Georgette finished Beauvallet while in Macedonia and posted the manuscript home to her publisher in time for September publication. Beauvallet is an English captain feared by the Spanish as a devil-worshiping pirate, although he is of course an honorable pirate who attacks Spanish ships in the name of the Queen and relies on luck, skill, daring, and a sense of humor. By the end of 1929, the Rougiers had decided it was time to go home, but not before Georgette had begun writing a new novel (more on that next week).

Altogether the story and characters were a little thin for a book, but it would make a terrific film.

There's some great sea battles, sword fights, prison breaks, and chases both in carriage and by horse. The first Georgette Heyer novel I have read which was not set either in the Regency or Georgian periods, Beauvallet is a swashbuckling Elizabethan adventure, and provided me a few hours of lighthearted reading.

A ready supply of reference books enabled Georgette to continue writing the historical fiction that she loved.

Don Diego is obviously effeminate and viewed with disapproval, but after signalling this very clearly the author doesn't know what to do about it and tries making him aggressively sexual which doesn't really work. Though written well before Errol Flynn made The Sea Hawk, I dare you to read this and >not< picture Flynn as dashing Nick Beauvallet. The final third of the book is the best when the pace picks up and there are plenty of threats and escapes. The year is 1586 and 35-year-old Sir Nicholas Beauvallet (great great great grandson of Simon Beauvallet, the Coldheart) is one of the most infamous corsair of the Elizabethan era.

Nick gets what he needs but his typical good fortune leads him to something even better - after besting a Frenchman who was trying to steal his horse near the Spanish frontier, he discovers the man was the Chevalier de Guise, a courier for the powerful de Guise family who carries a secret, encrypted message to King Phillip in Spain. He's fallen in love with the spirited Spanish woman, and pledges to come back for her within a year and "make an Englishwoman of her". Georgette enjoyed many aspects of her life in Macedonia: it was simpler and free of the demands of her extended family; she and Ronald were happy in each other’s company and they took walks together and sometimes went horseback riding around the district.Pages are mildly age toned with more residue on page 59, a small sticker on free front end paper and a crack in binding between the few first pages where a fold out pedigree lies. In the middle of the book, Dominica is mostly off-screen, and the story is swashbuckling and adventure as Nick gallavants about, merrily murdering people and laughing in the face of danger. All of the fake defiance and bitchiness that she'd displayed when she was Nick's 'captive' suddenly became real when she was truly in danger.

Kratovo, where Georgette lived from 1928 to 1930 and where she wrote her sixth historical novel, Beauvallet. As for me, if I'm reading a historical novel, I want it to be historical in more than merely clothing. Reprint, cheap edition, a very good book, contemporary inscription dated 1939 on free front end paper.She is in a pitiable position: having grown up in the relative freedom of Santiago's more relaxed social customs, her independent spirit will find no welcome in Spain where stifling rules and etiquette prevail for women.