Miss Ridgeway's Privateer

A Regency Romance with a difference

In 1809, Major Ridgeway is killed leading his men at the battle of Talavera, leaving his daughter, Lucy, penniless. She travels to Ireland to live with her grandmother, but, on the way, her ship is attacked by a French Privateer. Her ship and its passengers are forced into the port of Saint-Malo, where they are held for ransom. During that time, Lucy falls in love with the ship's surgeon, Patrick O'Rourke, an exiled Irishman, but is unsure whether he thinks of her merely as a friend. The captain of the ship who captured her offers her a carte blanche. When she refuses, his friend kidnaps her. She escapes and eventually she and Patrick manage to reach Ireland. Her aristocratic family welcome her and she embarks on the many festivities of the Irish Season. Patrick, meanwhile, has been impersonating a cleric who was also a fellow passenger and prisoner. When the real man arrives at a music recital, Lucy realises she must warn Patrick to leave Dublin immediately or he will be arrested and hanged for piracy. Will she be in time?