It was a rumor that Matt did nothing to encourage, but he didn’t discourage it, either, because from then on men lined up in droves to sail on his ship whenever she docked in her home port of New Orleans. For every vacancy there were twenty applicants, and Matt liked being able to pick and choose. He prided himself on having the best crew afloat, and, in turn, the men prided themselves on their captain’s invincibility. It seemed that nothing could touch Matt Grayson-not storms, not bullets, not knives, not even the occasional jealous husband. Nothing, until the devil was ready to claim his own.

The less superstitious among his crew had another, simpler explanation for their captain’s uncanny ability to bring them safely through the worst the sea could throw at them. “Those born to be hanged will never drown” was what they said of him when the ocean rose up in fury and threatened to crush the Lucie Belle’s hull like a giant, angry fist holding an eggshell, only to set her down again safely in calmer waters some hours later. The saying kept his men from despairing when the waves were thirty feet high and the sea and the sky met and seethed like a briny mixture from hell’s blackest caldron. Matt, hearing the words passed like a talisman from man to man, would throw back his head and laugh in incredulous amazement that grown men, and hardened sea dogs at that, could take comfort in something so ridiculous.

But he was not laughing today-had not been laughing for some time now-because it looked as if he would, after all, meet the fate the men had prophesied for him. Three months ago, in a sequence of nightmarish events, he had been summarily arrested, tried, and found guilty of the grisly murders of Lord James Farrindgon, Tory nephew of the prime minister, and his wife and children; today Queen Victoria’s government meant to exact its vengeance on one who had removed a thorn from its side. Today they were going to hang him, Matthew Zacharias Grayson, by the neck until he was dead.