Swear by the Moon
Chapter One
LONDON
1798
Whistling softly to himself, Patrick Blackburne took the steps to
his rented house on Hamilton Place, two at a time. It was a fine
September morning in London, and having just come from a sale at
Tattersall's, where he had bought a nice chestnut mare that had
caught his eye, he was feeling pleased with himself.
Life had been good to Patrick. He had been blessed with a handsome
face and form, as well as a fortune that allowed him to live where
and how he pleased. Across the Atlantic Ocean from England, he owned
a large plantation and fine home near Natchez in the Mississippi
Territory. His father had been a rich, wellborn Englishman who had
taken a respectable fortune and had made it a magnificent one in the
New World; his mother, even more wellborn, was related to half the
aristocracy in England and possessed a large fortune of her own.
Patrick's father had died fifteen years ago and Patrick had
inherited that fortune at the relatively young age of twenty-three;
in time, since he was an only child, h ... read full excerpt from: Swear by the Moon ebook
