Excerpt

Chapter 1

A Funeral

The cloying scent of mourning lilies filled the air around the carved oak casket lying in state in Anne Cormac's drawing room. The perfume clogged in her throat. She looked away from the occupant of the burnished coffin, searching for a distraction. The small fussy tables on either side of the casket with their vases of lilies were useless, as were the family portraits lining the flocked wallpaper and even the view of the gardens beyond the windows.

Remembering the broadsheet she'd discovered in her father's desk that very morning, she carefully slid the paper out of her skirt pocket. It was soft with age and creased almost to breaking. A musty smell wafted up when she unfolded it. She barely recognized her own faded image under the 'Wanted for Piracy!' caption—she hadn't been that young lass for a good many years.

She leaned over to tuck the folded paper into the dead man's frock-coat. "I kept my promise, Da. I stayed hidden like you wanted. I didn't embarrass you or Jack." She took a deep breath, "But I'm done with hiding now." She half-expected him to sit up in outrage.

For the moment, she was alone with Charles Towne Carolina's preeminent merchant lawyer: her father, William Cormac. The other mourners were on the far side of the house, a silent expanse of wood paneled hall between them. Only the whining of cicadas outside broke the funereal hush of the drawing room.

As she turned away from the casket, a wash of heat swept up her chest, reddening her cheeks and earlobes into a fiery shade that clashed with the lingering auburn of her hair. "Oh, for pity's sake!" Anne muttered. "Not again." The flushing was intense but short-lived, thankfully. She hoped the episodes would disappear entirely once she shifted from maiden to crone.

Tugging at the silly ruffled collar of her dress in a vain effort to cool herself, she hurried away to properly freshen up in private in her own rooms when the truth struck her: she didn't need to hide the flushes anymore. She'd only done so to stop her father's cringes when her womanly curse was brought to his attention.

She opened the door to the grand hall separating the business and private areas of the large house. The murmur of voices in the parlor and formal dining room grew louder. The noise grated at her. The house—her house now—was filled to the rafters with lawyers and merchants, her father's colleagues and neighbors paying their final respects.

Respect. She snorted. They had none. Not one of them had bothered to visit Da as he lay dying these past six months. She resented every syllable of false sympathy dripping from their mouths. If this wake hadn't been one of Da's final wishes, she'd have tossed everyone out on their rumps hours ago. Instead, she wandered the spacious house trying to avoid them, feeling at sixes and sevens. The worse irritation by far was the number of single-minded widowers on the hunt for a wealthy second wife who had appeared among the mourners, all eager to relieve her of managing her father's estate.

A door down the hall opened and the hum of voices grew louder. Swiftly opening the door to her father's study, Anne ducked inside.

A golden glimmer from the sideboard caught her eye—the rum decanter. She splashed a generous tot into a glass, forgoing the water a gentile lady was expected to add. A drink would help her face the hordes again, even if it did encourage those flushes of heat. Her mourning dress of unrelieved black would disguise any resultant wet patches under her arms or elsewhere. She snorted again at the thought of being presentable for the unwanted men in her parlour.

"Miz Anne?" her maid, Sara, poked her head in the door.

"Yes?" Anne snapped, her hand tightening on the crystal tumbler. Turning to the door, she winced at the cautious look on Sara's face. "Forgive me. I shouldn't take my ill temper out on you. It's not your fault all these leeches are here."

"It's quite all right, Miz Anne." Sara grinned at her. "If I took offence easily, I'd never have stayed in your employ." She proffered a stiff parchment, a red blob of sealing wax affixed to one side.

"Impudent lass!" Anne smiled wryly as Sara likely had intended, she'd been smoothing Anne's stormy temper for many years now.

Sara Hughes was something of a rarity in Charles Towne: She was white and she received a salary. After Jack's birth, Da had insisted Anne have a ladies' maid. Anne had flatly refused a slave—many of her old shipmates and friends had been coloured. She'd found Sara, the eleven-year-old daughter of one of her father's legal clients, an Irishman attempting to buy back his bond against the wishes of his owner. She'd raised the lass for more than twenty years now, and they'd become friends along the way.

Anne took the letter from Sara's hand and the maid slipped out, quietly clicking the door shut behind her.

Tucking an escaped lock of white-streaked auburn hair back into her chignon, Anne checked the imprint in the sealing wax holding the parchment closed. The ornately curling W looked faintly familiar and a frown creased her brow as she wondered where she'd seen it before. She cracked the wax open with a soft pop.

The folded parchment blossomed open, leaving a neat square of discoloured paper in the middle. She could see some handwriting half-hidden behind the folded square but she ignored it in favour of the contents first. It was a single page, a creased broadsheet similar to the one she'd tucked into her father's funeral coat earlier. This one was not Anne's own though.

Jack Rackham, her beloved Calico Jack, stared out at her from the page.

She caught her breath at the sudden surge of emotions. The last time she'd seen his rakishly handsome face was the day of his hanging. A pang of guilt swept over her—her final words to him had been unkind. Well-deserved, yes, but still unkind.

Putting the broadsheet down, she turned to the crisp parchment used as envelope. There were three lines of neat printing centred on it:

AB,

Meet me where you left your first bastard.

The sweat under her arms turned icy.

AB, Anne Bonny.

Someone knew her true name.

At her father's insistence, she'd kept her identity secret for more than twenty years. She'd gone by her maiden name Cormac, pretending to be her father's daughter-in-law to hide the truth—Jack Jr. was born out of wedlock. She had been married but not to Jack's father. To protect her son, she'd have agreed to any condition her father set.

Someone knew who she was, knew whose child was in her belly when Da had ransomed her from hanging. They knew that Jack was the son of two notorious pirates. And mentioning 'her firstborn' meant they knew Jack wasn't her only child with that pirate.

With shaking hands, she downed the shot of rum and splashed another into her glass.

The letter had to be from James Bonny, her erstwhile husband. She'd kill the man if she ever saw him again—it was his doing that Calico Jack, Mary, and the others had been caught. Husband or no, she'd kill Bonny for making Jack lose his father. For making her lose the man who'd claimed her heart after Bonny had broken it.

But what was the heart the letter referred to? Her son Jack was her heart but he was safely in the bosom of the Royal Navy.

With a rush of fear, she suddenly knew the letter was referring to her sea-glass heart. A chunky piece of red sea-glass in the rough shape of a heart, it had been given to her by her other beloved, Mary Read, years ago. It was her most prized possession, being the only memento she had from the best years of her life sailing with her two lovers, Calico and Mary.

Abandoning her second drink, Anne rushed out of her father's office and flew up the stairs to her bedchamber. She yanked open the large drawer of her dressing table and shoved aside the small monogrammed velvet bags containing her jewelry, hunting for the one specially made velvet-lined box where the fragile heart was kept safe.

The tiny carved oak box was empty, the velvet lining still showed the imprint of the irregular chunk of sea-glass.

"God dammit all to hell!" Anne wanted to stab something.

She dashed out of the room, shouting for Sara.

At the bottom of the stairs, Sara walked through the kitchen door, "Calm yourself, I'm here." She stepped lightly despite the large silver tray of hors d'oeuvres in her hands.

"Who left that letter?" Anne demanded.

"I'm sorry, I didn't see who left it. It was with the notes of condolence on the correspondence tray in the front hall," Sara said with a concerned frown, "Is there something amiss? What's happened?"

"I don't know yet. I must puzzle it out first." Leaving the confused Sara to return to their guests, Anne returned to her father's office to stare at the letter.

AB,

Meet me where you left your first bastard

What did this mean? Her firstborn had Mary's heart? Or someone close to them did. But how? And why? This had the taste of a threat. But was it a threat to her or to her child?

The first time she'd been with child in '18, Anne had agreed with Calico Jack—the sea was no place for a child. She'd given birth in New Providence, now known as Nassau, and Calico had found a family to take the child in. She hadn't regretted leaving the baby behind until after she'd begun raising her son, Jack. But whenever she'd broached the subject of returning to retrieve the child, Da had refused to consider it. Thinking he might soften over time, she pressed him once or twice a year until the year the child would have turned twelve. Jack was nearly nine then and her father's threat to send Jack away to an English boarding school stopped any further attempts.

Calico Jack had left her but a single clue to finding the babe. He'd pressed its tiny footprint onto a clay tablet and scratched the name of the adoptive parents on it. His final words to her had been where he'd hidden the clay tablet—Blackbeard's Well on Mayaguana in the old Pirate's Republic.

She crumpled the threatening parchment in her hand. She had to find the child, grown now but still her firstborn.

She had to go back, back to where it had all started. Her heart leaped with joy at the thought.

Anne has changed little from the young pirate she was and chafes under the bonds of Southern Society in 1741. The death of her father shatters these shackles and frees Anne to be herself—grumpy, outrageous, vengeful, and clever.