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London
1799
"Given the evidence and the documentation offered 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, 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.
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 waIk 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 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. Tafts 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 circulating the gossipy ton regarding her impending betrothal to Lord Harris. Knowing Uncle Phineas, Georgie had little doubt that he probably would have informed her of her nuptials with just enough time to dress for the ceremony.
Especially considering that her intended bridegroom had already buried nine wives.
One Night of Passion. Copyright © by Elizabeth Boyle. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. Available now wherever books are sold.
Excerpted from One Night of Passion by Elizabeth Boyle
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