The Silver Locket

Flying no colors and desperate for crew, Sneaky Lass is a damaged brig in no position to look too closely at any volunteers, no matter how ill-suited to sea life they may be. After a series of decisions Jane can’t turn back from, she commits one final act of desperation; she dons stolen boots, shorn hair, and the name Dixon Ables to take up with the crew of Sneaky Lass. Now, she finds herself in a position where she must keep up her boyish disguise or be thrown into the briny deep.

Her ruse uncovered, Jane finds herself in exile from the home and family she found aboard Sneaky Lass. What little money she had now gone, Jane’s options are to find a livelihood or starve. Helmed by a notoriously mad captain, the lethal crew of Deceit is leaving their mark across Trinity’s many brothels. Left with no other options, Jane joins ranks, but it is not long before she learns there is no honor among these thieves and murderers. Jane finds her position aboard Deceit to be more captive than crew.

Torn between two loves; his ship, Sneaky Lass, and the enigmatic Jane Ables, Bennett is forced to face who he is as a man when he is not wearing the mask of a captain. A man so mired by the past that he has only ever looked back through the bottom of a bottle of liquor.

Michael Mason, surgeon for the enemy ship Three Queens, faces an uphill battle as he holds the precariously balanced life of Sneaky Lass captain, Bennett Holt, in his hands. He finds his vow to save lives is in direct conflict with his personal feelings about the surly captain and the secrets Bennett asks Michael to keep. Bennett mourns the loss of his health, but more so chokes on the damage to his pride. Having not completed his mission to destroy Captain Gates, he fears appearing weak in the eyes of the Sneaky Lass crew. Worse still, each day, infection draws on his strength.

Life on the sea is never easy, but hope for something smoother grows dim for Sneaky Lass captain Bennett Holt, when bounty hunters sell him to the Imperial Navy. There is no peace to be found shackled in the bowels of a warship with only the looming shadow of the gallows for company.

Regaining his footing as a captain, Bennett Holt finds stepping into Jane Ables’ boots as leader of the battered schooner, Ferocious Pip, is easier than recovering his place as her lover. Struggling with Jane’s grief, Bennett’s attempts to recapture her heart are bogged down by his need to once again strike a fearsome and respected image as a pirate of note. Progress on both is complicated by a strange, new man who has taken his place as Jane’s trusted confidante, and by unsettling rumors among the crew that flow like cheap liquor.

Jane’s future, the desperate dreams she’s locked in her heart for so long, rest on faraway shores, but being ashore comes with its own challenges; ones that force Jane and Bennett to change their identities, yet again. But, in a life of piracy, grudges are often long-held and blood-tainted. Jane couldn’t have known that when pirates crossed long ago set their vengeful gazes upon her. She isn’t the same woman she was when she climbed aboard Sneaky Lass a lifetime ago. Watching her hopes of beginning a new and lawful life deflate like sails on a windless sea is not who she is anymore.