Nick can seem boastful but I see it more as certainty and confidence in his own abilities - he has never failed to achieve whatever feat he set out to accomplish. 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 1929, with Beauvallet, he brokered terms which gave Georgette 15% on the first 3,000 copies sold, 20% on the next 7,000 copies and 25% on all copies sold above 10,000.

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. It's not a Regency novel like most of Heyer's others, but one of the more historical ones, and honestly I could've dispensed with the romance for more of Nick swashbuckling his way around Spain as a spy.

Tense with looming danger, Beauvallet is a rollicking ride of romance, sword fights, mad dashes across country, midnight escapes, scheming aunts, dastardly cousins and one very engaging, lovable hero. The plot, however, was based on the improvised dramas, devised by Georgette for her brothers and friends when they were children. I should acknowledge that things did pick up once Beauvallet got his ass to Spain, but it wasn't a true take off?How is Sir Nicholas supposed to come back to Spain to claim fair lady as his bride if all of Spain wants his head? Travelling as a Frenchman provides Beauvallet with a convenient disguise in a rigidly Catholic land where the English are abhorred as Protestant heretics.

I have 39 of her romances (she also wrote about eight detective books with the help of her detective husband, but I've not read any of them); there are about three or four I don't have, though I've read almost all of them. You can change your choices at any time by visiting Cookie preferences, as described in the Cookie notice.My edition is very old, actually it's the First Australian Edition from 1948, it has no dust jacket, and the pages are brown and brittle. It's set in Elizabethan times rather than around the Regency or Georgian eras, and involves England's conflict with Spain.

Still, there were good characterizations, (I will admit to laughing at the greedy, but totally honest about it, aunt), and the swashbuckling was great. It's only the fact that I know Heyer also wrote The Talisman Ring and The Grand Sophy, both of which I love, that means this rather pales in comparison.Set during the Tudor era (Elizabeth I is a character), this reminded me of Captain Blood or even a Dumas novel .