Author(s): David Donachie

Fiction

John Pearce, having negotiated the highly questionable sale of the two French prizes taken in The Devil to Pay, has left HMS Flirt, as well as the crew and the wounded Henry Digby in Brindisi and is headed for Naples to see his lover. He seeks a way to defeat both Admiral Sir William Hotham and Captain Ralph Barclay, men who are his sworn enemies. All his calculations are thrown into turmoil when he discovers that Emily is pregnant, but since she is still married to Ralph Barclay, by the laws of the time, he can claim the child as his own.