"One Night of Passion" by Elizabeth Boyle

One Night of Passion by Elizabeth Boyle 2002

"One Night of Passion" is the story of Miss Georgiana Escott, a young woman who is about to be forced into an unwanted marriage, and Lord Colin Danvers, a naval officer on a secret mission. Discovering that the horrible man her guardian wants her to marry will only do so if she is proven to be a virgin (by a doctor) she runs off in the middle of the night to find a man to make sure she fails the test. She ends up spending the night in Colin's arms, then rushes out the next morning, leaving Colin a bit shocked and dissapointed, as he would have liked to continue their relationship. The story then cuts to a year later, in Italy. Colin is conducting a secret mission against the French. Georgiana, who has a child from the one night she spent with Colin, has fled England and is in Italy with her sister. While fleeing from the French, she finds herself on Colin's ship and eventually accused of being a French spy herself.

This book is somewhat ridiculous and complicated. I never did entirely understand Colin's secret mission, and the whole premise of Georgiana having to ruin herself in order to save herself from a horrible marriage was a bit of a stretch. Why didn't she just run away? She was obviously willing to do it later... or just refuse to marry the guy?? She didn't HAVE to say "I do." I was also a bit distraught by the fact that she was carrying her daughter around in her luggage. WTF? Why wasn't she carrying the child in her arms like a decent mother? As I've found to be the case in Elizabeth Boyle's novels, she lets the complicated, somewhat silly plot run away with the story. This book is no exception.

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