The duchess was captured at sea, and held for ransom by the dashing pirate. She: buxom, bowlegged and muscular from a lifetime of riding, surly. Him: Leggy, raw and rude in his masculinity, dashing. A former sailor in the royal navy, he grew tired of the floggings and the scurvy and jumped at the chance to go rogue when his own ship was captured. He worked his way from the very bottom of a crew of two hundred to commanding his own ship.

The duchess is intrigued.

Sparks fly, of course, in the close confines of the ship they can’t get away from each other, but she has languished herself, and is tired of forever trailing after her husband, a civil servant in the foreign corps. Her mind is sharp, and her hands strong, and she has been wasted in domesticity; she is quick at the front of every boarding party, fierce and urgent and proud.

The pirate falls for her as she screams defiance atop her first kill.

Will they make it work? Can love — true love — blossom in the salt spray, in a time of war and plunder, between two so different people? Can they find space together to indulge in their primal, physical needs? Perhaps in a lifeboat, a gunwale, the close, airless confines of his cabin? Reader, it will all end happily; never fear.