The Heart of a Pirate

Prologue

PROLOGUE

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As usual, I left a gift for you at the end of the book. The recipe for Citrus Beach Pie is both easy and delicious!

June 1811

New Orleans

Standing among the charred debris of his family’s boarding house in New Orleans, Bernard Sauvage lifted a blackened marble box from the rubble. Nearby, his sons as well as his late brother’s children were salvaging what they could, shifting bricks and burned beams.

The smoke-scented morning was hushed; they’d lost everything.

Bernard shifted the box in his hand well enough to remove the lid then sucked in his breath. Two roughly cut emeralds rested on a stack of letters. He stared for a moment before brushing them with his fingertips, half expecting them to dissolve into dust.

They were real.

He fingered through the yellowed parchment. The first letter was dated almost 100 years ago. He scanned it and raised his eyebrows in shock at the signature.

It had been written by the notorious, female pirate, Anne Bonny.

Bernard moved to an upturned water trough and sat to read. A short time later, he replaced the letters in the marble box along with the emeralds. The lady pirate hinted that she’d hidden a fortune in jewels just before she and the crew of the Gallant had been captured.

It was a risk, but if he could find this secret treasure, he and his family would be able to rebuild what they had lost.

His late brother sired five children. He looked up as the youngest, eight year-old twins, approached. Julian lowered a box of blackened silverware to the ground, and Jacqueline placed a bent serving tray and three blackened dice on top of it.

“What did you find, Uncle Bernard?”

“Can we see?”

Bernard smiled and rubbed the cool marble. “Our past. And our future. Get the others. We’re going on a journey.”