Book Two of The Ravenshaw Chronicles. Boston, 1722. The harbor runs on tar, tide, and trust-until "respectable" losses begin happening with uncanny precision. Elizabeth Fairchild arrives quietly from the south carrying fragments of proof and a vow to stop Edmund Ravenshaw, the polished predator who steals like a merchant and vanishes like a ghost. Edmund has reinvented himself as a gentleman agent, trading in manifests, favors, and borrowed names; his hands stay clean while other men do the lifting. To catch him, Elizabeth must fight on his chosen battlefield: ledgers, seals, arrival windows, and the whispered economy of docks and taverns. A powerful cousin bankrolls the hunt-carefully, for reputation's sake-while an infamous sailor's shadow circles just beyond paper's reach. As seduction and commerce intertwine in drawing rooms and countinghouses, Elizabeth learns a brutal truth: in a city built on credit, a lie can sail farther than any ship, and the cost of exposing a thief may be paid in blood.
