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Chapter 1

Devonshire, England

May 1817

It was the third ransom note in astrue

Pembourne:

The exchange will be ht Eleven pm Ten lish Channel Take a small, unarmed boat Come alone, accompanied only by the diamond Heed these instructions or your sister will die

Shoving the terse e back into his coat pocket, Slayde Huntley, the ninth Earl of Pe vessel with one hand, siht of the lantern By his calculations, he’d traveled more than nine of those ten miles He steeled hi the boat deeper into the fog-shrouded waters of the channel, waters far too choppy for a boat this size

He should have brought the brig Every instinct in his body cried out that not only was this craft unsuited for rough seas, its very construction left hie had been precise And, instincts or not, Slayde dared not disobey for fear of jeopardizing his sister’s life

Aurora

The thought of her being held by some filthy pirate made Slayde’s skin crawl For the u short in his responsibilities, for allowing this unprecedented atrocity to occur In the decade since he’d becouardian, he’d successfully isolated her froed absences, ensured her safety by hiring an army of servants whose fundauarded against intruders Events had proven the latter easier to accos he received each tie to venture beyond her revered lighthouse without being spotted and restored to Pembourne So how in the hell had this happened?

Veheuilt In a crisis such as this, there was rooation and self-censure would come later Now, they would only serve to dilute hiswhat he’d sailed out here to do: deliver the ransom and recover his sister

Ranso its talons into his past and refused to let go, whose curse haunted the Huntleys like so to dissuade hundreds of privateers froem

Pondering the glittering black stone noedged inside his Hessian boot, Slayde’s knuckles whitened on the wheel What made him think the claims in this ransom note were not mere fabrications invented strictly to procure the jewel? What if, like e were a hoax? What if this pirate didn’t have Aurora at all?

Again, Slayde abandoned his line of thinking, refusing to conte hoenerations of blood spilled already Aurora would not fall victireed and hatred spawned by that loathsoh water, he would find her

The sound of an approaching vessel breaking the waves o taut Eyes narrowed, he searched thethe outline of a ship

At last it came

Steadying his craft, Slayde waited while the ship drew closer