Honor bound

Lieutenant Crawford Treynor is the illegitimate son of a noblewoman. As an infant he was given to a poor farmer, and the beatings he took there drove him to run away at fourteen. He has since risen to become a respected naval officer, and he means to captain his own frigate. He distrusts the aristocracy and wants no woman in his life, least of all one of noble birth.

Jeannette Boucher has just escaped the guillotine of the French Revolution. To secure her family's future, she agrees to marry a wealthy English baron. On the wedding night she learns what her husband, who cannot father a child, intends in order to get himself an heir. She flees and hides aboard Treynor's ship.

When she is found, the lieutenant must decide what to do with her. His sense of duty says to return her to her husband, yet he is sure the man will abuse her. Her beauty and spirit draw him toward a choice he once thought impossible for himself: risk his career and his ambitions to keep her with him.

This is a historical romance set during the era of the French Revolution, with a naval officer as hero and an aristocratic runaway as heroine. The central tension is a hero who resists attachment against a heroine who has nowhere safe to go, and the dilemma of duty against protection drives the plot.