Frenchman's Creek is a 1941 historical novel by Daphne du Maurier. Set in Cornwall during the reign of Charles II, it tells the story of a love affair between an impulsive English lady and a French pirate. Dona, Lady St. Columb, makes a sudden visit with her children to Navron, her husband's remote estate in Cornwall, in a fit of disgust with her shallow life in London court society. There she finds that the property, unoccupied for several years, is being used as a base by a notorious French pirate who has been terrorizing the Cornish coast. Dona finds that the pirate, Jean-Benoit... Aubéry, is not a desperate character at all, but rather a more educated and cultured man than her own doltish husband, and they fall in love. Dona dresses as a boy and joins the pirate crew on an expedition to cut out and capture a richly laden merchant ship belonging to one of her neighbors. The attack is a success, but the news of it brings Dona's husband Harry and his friend Rockingham to Cornwall, disrupting her idyllic romance.
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