One Night of Passion (Avon Romantic Treasure)

385 Pages·2002·1.82 MB·English

by  Elizabeth Boyle

ELIZABETH
BOYLE

One Night of
Passion
To my good friend and fellow author,
Jaclyn Reding
Always there to lend a sympathetic ear
and to prop me up when all seems lost.
She is what good friends are all about.
Contents

Danvers Hall
There are not many who are tossed out of the ton amid
scandal and. . .

Chapter 1
Given the evidence and the documentation. . .

Chapter 2
I will not marry you, Lord Danvers. Not now or. . .

Chapter 3
Georgie couldn’t believe her terrible luck. Of all the. . .

Chapter 4
What had she been thinking, coming to such a place?. . .

Chapter 5
True to Aunt Verena’s worries about young ladies. . .

Chapter 6
Colin couldn’t believe the utter nerve. Why, she’d. . .

Chapter 7
Colin rowed silently ashore with only the vaguest. . .

Chapter 8
Hours later, Colin took one last look through his. . .

Chapter 9
A guardian, indeed! The very word was the bane of. . .

Chapter 10
Colin had successfully avoided Georgie for the bulk of. . .
Chapter 11
Georgie found herself immediately placed under arrest. . .

Chapter 12
“Take him away. Put him in with the rest of his crew”. . .

Chapter 13
“Brigitte, I must go to her.” Franklin Escott’s rose. . .

Chapter 14
Just before dawn, Georgie realized Mandeville’s sloop. . .

Chapter 15
By later that evening, Colin stood on the quarterdeck. . .

Chapter 16
Georgie’s bliss ended several months later on the. . .
Epilogue
"Georgie! Dammit, where are you?” Colin thundered. . .

Author’s Note

About the Author

Copyright

Cover

About the Publisher
Danvers Hall
1818

There are not many who are tossed out of the ton amid
scandal and ruin and then return to find themselves feted
and rewarded. Such has been my misfortune.
Since my restoration to Society’s good graces, I have
received entreaty after entreaty to recount my perilous
adventures.
In fairness, I must confess, I have given my eager
audiences a well told tale, full of duplicity and danger, of
great follies and foes overcome. And to every one of them I
have lied.
For my story is, and always was, a love story.
If I were to tell the truth, I would regale them with the
heroic deeds of my impossible, formidable Georgie, my
dearest and enchanting Cyprian, and how in one night of
passion she stole my heart, and in the process saved a
nation.

Colin, Baron Danvers

1
Chapter 1

Lon don
179 9
“G iven the evidence and the documentation of-

fered to this court, I have no other choice,

Captain Danvers, than to see you relieved of all duties
and obligations in His Majesty’s Navy.” With those
words said, the Lord High Admiral brought his gavel
down on the court bar. The responding thump, like the
last clap of a hammer on a coffin nail, was followed by
stunned silence.
After all, the packed hearing room at the Admiralty
had just witnessed the end of one of the navy’s most
brilliant careers, some said one that rivaled even
Nelson’s.
Few doubted they would ever again see such a
precipitous and fatal descent in their lifetime.
There wasn’t a man in the room, officer or jack tar,
2
ONE NIGHT OF PASSION 3

who wasn’t saying a prayer of thanksgiving that it wasn’t
his hide being flayed, his livelihood sinking to the bottom
of the icy Atlantic.
But then again, most of the men in the room held their
posts as men bound by the honor and code of the sea, the
written and unwritten edicts that Captain Colin Danvers
had flagrantly violated. No one disputed the damning
evidence of his treason and duplicity. Not even Nelson, the
captain’s staunch supporter and mentor all these years, had
offered to attest to the man’s innocence and character given
the irrefutable facts.
So the future that had once shone like the North Star for
Captain Danvers now looked as bleak and murky as a
Thames fog.
Cashiered out of the navy.
Forfeiture of all his prize money—a sum that had made
him the envy of his peers.
It was a moment worthy of silence.
As for the man himself, Captain Danvers stood before
the Admiralty Board, his back ramrod straight, his
shoulders squared like a taut reef bar. And despite the fact
that he’d just been cast out, he faced his judges with the
same indomitable spirit that had been his undoing.
“Is that all, my lords?” he had the audacity to ask.
The Lord High Admiral blustered, his whiskers shaking
in anger. “Consider yourself lucky you aren’t hanging from
a yardarm, you insolent pup.”
Several heads nodded in agreement. Truly, if it had
been any other man, he would have found himself swinging
before the day was out. But lofty familial connections had
kept that prospect at bay.
4 ELIZABETH BOYLE

Danvers, treasonous bastard that he was, had recently
inherited his father’s barony. And if that wasn’t enough, the
captain’s maternal grandfather was none other than the
Duke of Setchfield, a man few people dared cross.
No, the Admiralty couldn’t hang Captain Danvers, but
the punishment they’d enacted was just as effective.
They’d taken the man from the sea. From Society.
From a life among his peers. A life about to be spent, some
said, landlocked in a hell of disdain and scorn.
In the back of the hearing room, a pipe whistled the end
of the session, and the trio of judges rose in unison.
Danvers bowed to them, making an elegant and noble
show of it. Then, as if he had just been handed the
command of the entire fleet, he turned smoothly on one
heel and, with his head held high, began the long march out
of the room. The crowd melted apart, leaving him a lonely
aisle. He walked past the downcast glances, the whispered
observations, and, by many, the cut direct as they turned
their backs to him.
Yet as he made his departure, it was as if he didn’t see
any of it.
Damned, it was observed by an old captain hours later
at one of the officers’ clubs, if the bastard didn’t walk out
of there smiling like the devil himself.

Georgiana Escott stood before the door to her
uncle’s private dining room, girding herself for the
confrontation that was about to take place. The letter
clenched in her hand, outlining the latest indignity to
be heaped upon her by her uncaring relation, was the
ONE NIGHT OF PASSION 5

final straw in a lifetime of enduring her uncle’s disinterest
and parsimony.
If only Mrs. Taft hadn’t died, she thought. Then
Georgie and her sister, Kit, would still be safely ensconced
in the lady’s Penzance home where their uncle had
deposited them for fostering eleven years earlier after their
parents’ deaths.
Uncle Phineas had wanted nothing to do with his
orphaned nieces then, so why should he go to all this fuss
now?
Really, Georgie decided, if there was blame to place for
this debacle, it was entirely the vicar’s fault.
If the righteous man hadn’t been so scandalized at the
idea of Georgie and Kit remaining in Mrs. Taft’s small
cottage after the lady’s untimely death and taken it upon
himself to write to their uncle, she would not be in this
position.
Then again, if the vicar had known the truth about Mrs.
Taft’s past, he and his wife probably wouldn’t have called
on the lady at all and counted her as one of his “finest”
parishioners.
Oh, bother the interference of men. Georgie paced in
front of the dining room doors. They just go about
arranging women’s lives without so much as a by your
leave.
Well, she wasn’t going to stand for it.
And certainly not this, she thought, clenching the letter
in her hand even tighter. Marriage to a man four times her
age! A man reputed to be the worst reprobate in all of
England!
Luckily for Georgie, Lady Finch, an old family
friend, had written her detailing the wild rumors circ-
ulating the gossipy ton regarding her impending be-