Surrender of a Siren

Surrender of a Siren is a 2009 Regency historical romance by Tessa Dare, published by Ballantine Books as a 400-page paperback.

Sophia Hathaway is an heiress who leaves an arranged marriage and conceals her identity in order to travel, which is the device that puts a well-bred woman into a working ship's company without protection. Benedict Grayson, known as Gray, is the privateer whose vessel she boards, and the novel describes him as a scoundrel who sails for pleasure and profit until her judgement and her drawing unsettle him. She jilts her groom, packs her paints and sketchbook, and poses as a governess to obtain passage on the ship Aphrodite, which makes the false identity the price of the voyage rather than a plot twist.

Tessa Dare went on to write a long list of Regency romances, and this early example pairs the drawing-room material with a sea voyage rather than keeping to London. The voyage is also what keeps the couple inside one setting, and the privateer's ship gives Sophia a society of her own choosing rather than the one she was raised in. Dare writes the period detail as working detail, a ship's routine and a captain's authority among them, and the romance has to be resolved inside those limits.