Chapter 1

           Lizzy unbuckled her high leather boots and slipped out of them at the back door of the steamy greenhouse.  She tucked them safely behind a wide fern in a clay pot and stepped quickly across the marble floor to the white French doors on the other side of the room.  She skidded along the oak panel flooring and then padded up the deep purple carpet of the stairs and down a narrow hallway.  She ducked through an open door, and headed for a rosewood wardrobe.  From it she pulled a pale butter-colored nightgown.

            Warm water cascaded out of the faucet and into the porcelain tub to mix with the powerful lavender scent of her bath oils.  She turned off the water and slid under the soothing suds.  Lizzy sighed, closed her eyes, and "

            “Lizzy!  You’re here!”

            Her sooty face popped up on her slender neck and turned toward the doorway.  In it stood a short young woman clad in a maroon velvet hoop skirt with a tastefully scooped neck and puffed sleeves lined with gold.  The diamonds on the tiny silver tiara in her long silky brown hair caught the candlelight and glittered like a myriad of stars in the night sky.

            “I didn’t think you would be returning so soon.”

            “The baron’s guards were very obliging.”

            “Well, I am glad of that.  There was no need to use force?”

            “Force?” Lizzy smirked.  “They capitulated so readily it was almost as if they had been floating out there just waiting for us.”

            “The ‘Jolly Rodger’ is a well known symbol now.”

            “Yes, but I never expected those men to be so weak.”

            “As long as Baron Crumweller’s donation has successfully made its way to the treasury.  But I will leave you to your bath now.  I’ll go and see if anyone in the kitchens is still awake to make you a little something.”

            “Thank you, but that won’t be necessary.”  Lizzy’s belly was full of good warm soup and fine old rum.  She had yet again patronized her favorite dockside pub, The Mermaid’s Tail.  All the crewmembers of The Stormy Lass frequented the pub, and were well known by its more masculine patrons as the stormiest of stormy lasses.  They were not girls to mess around with.  Your prospective mistress was likely to pull a knife on you.

            Lizzy finished her bath and let the water down the drain with a sullen gurgle.  She slipped into her soft clothes and strolled down the hallway back to her room.  She pulled apart the dark curtains and lit her lamp.  The mattress gave way slightly as she sat on the edge of her bed.  Her feet curled up under her in a ladylike way quite opposite her normal posture.  She opened the top drawer in the mahogany bedside table and drew from it a small brown leather bound journal with her initials tooled into the front, and a quill pen and a bottle of ink.  She wrote carefully, with a curling hand.

August 12, 18--

            This room and this journal are a welcome respite from my obligation, my duty to the crown princess and her kingdom.  Two days ago we liberated Baron Crumweller’s taxes from his fastest ship.  They always seem to use their best ships and their best men; you can tell they are not just out for a lark at sea.  The greedy souls, they wish to get away with their riches and rob the populace.  It is this thought which keeps me from questioning the honorability of my profession.  I must say, I was born to be a pirate, heiress or not.

            She tucked her journal back into its drawer and blew out the candle.  There in the dark, her mind suddenly buzzed.  Tomorrow was her birthday, and also the two-year anniversary of her christening as a pirate.  Her cousin was doing a splendid job on the throne, and she did not regret her decision.  But a fine line of doubt laced the boundary of her mind: what kind of life was that of a pirate for a young lady about to turn eighteen years old?