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tavern in the village of Dragon’s Cove.
    And then that her father, Melchisedeck Clyst, was Captain Drake, leader of the local smuggling gang.
    She clearly didn’t know whether to be proud or ashamed of her parentage. Though “Lady Belle” lived openly with Melchisedeck Clyst in Dragon’s Cove, they’d never married.
    Con was delightfully scandalized by this blatant sinfulness—things like that never happened in Hawk in the Vale. Overall, however, he thought it a grand connection, and it made Susan even more exceptional in his eyes.
    He and his brother Fred spent time in Dragon’s Cove, and he started to look out for Captain Drake. He didn’t see him, and had no reason to go into the George and Dragon.
    They had a grand time in the village anyway. The fishermen were mostly willing to talk as they cleaned their catch or mended nets. They picked up fishing lore and tall stories as they tried to spot which were smugglers and which weren’t.
    The truth was, of course, that they all were.
    Sometimes the fishermen took them out in their boats and even let them have the huge treat of hauling in nets for them. Fred liked being on the boats more than Con, so he’d had time alone to wander the village straining to hear smuggling secrets.
    Stupid boy.
    He’d finally spotted Mel Clyst, a sinewy man of only moderate height, with a square jaw and Susan’s hazel eyes. He wasn’t exactly handsome—his bones were heavy and his nose had been broken a time or two—but it was easy to see him as a leader of men. He’d been dressed like the prosperous businessman he was in a cutaway coat and stylish beaver hat.
    Another time he saw him with Lady Belle, who was dressed as a fine lady, though with a flamboyant touch that Lady Kerslake would never attempt. A wicked woman, and Susan’s mother, although he gathered she had nothing at all to do with her children.
    Lady Belle fascinated him, but Captain Drake fascinated him more. It became his dearest ambition to have a chat with his hero.
    He got his wish, but it was not a chat he would have wanted.
    He’d been sitting on the pebbly beach listening to old Sim Lowstock telling his version of the killing of the dragon by the first earl when they were interrupted. He was politely but firmly escorted into the George and Dragon. Not into the taproom at the front, but into a back room fitted out more like a gentleman’s sitting room.
    Mel Clyst was sitting on a sofa in gentleman’s dress, Lady Belle beside him. It was the first time Con had seen her up close, and he noted plump, clear skin and large blue eyes, but above all he recognized her lush, carnal appeal. Her bodice was very low, and her wide hat held a sweeping, glorious plume dyed scarlet.
    Captain Drake and Lady Belle sat on the sofa like a king and queen, and Mel Clyst had chatted about Con and Susan.
    Now a man—and a man tested by fire—Con could still feel the sick nervousness and embarrassment of that interview. Or trial, even.
    Clyst had not been cruel, but Con had felt all Captain Drake’s power that day—the power of a natural leader, but also the power of a man who held the allegiance of most of the population of the coast. If he ordered one of the fishermen to take Con out and throw him into the deeps, it would be done.
    In later years, developing his own authority, and using the power of the direct warning and the unspoken threat, Captain Drake had been one of Con’s prime models.
    All it had been, however, was a conversation, one in which Mel Clyst acknowledged that Susan Kerslake was his daughter, that she enjoyed great freedom to wander the area because surely no one would do her any harm. That a promising young man like Con Somerford had an interesting life ahead of him, one away from here, in the army perhaps, or the law.
    It had been a silent but clear warning, man to man, not to do what he and Susan had done the very next day.
    Had the warning put the idea into his head, sown some sort of seed? There was no way to know. His