The thrill of the hunt. Prescott had said that to me as well. Once he found what he’d been seeking, possessing it was almost anticlimactic.

“You mean, like Leland’s Madeira?” I asked.

“Not exactly. Did he ever tell you about our so-called ancestor?” Clayton set his glass on a side table and used his fingers to make quotation marks. “Henry Every, the pirate?”

I thought of the Jolly Roger flag I’d seen in the corridor as I was leaving Prescott’s wine cellar the other day. “No,” I said.

“Henry was one of our less illustrious ancestors—Every, Avery, you just had to change the E to an A—who also happened to be the richest pirate who ever lived. He pillaged and plundered in the Atlantic and Indian Oceans in the late 1600s and dabbled in the slave trade as well. In his day he was known as the ‘King of Pirates,’” Clay said. “His ship was called the Fancy. Great name, isn’t it?”

He didn’t wait for my answer, nor did he seem to need one. “What made him so famous—or infamous—was that Every pulled off the biggest pirate heist in history, attacking a fleet of ships from India on their way to the annual pilgrimage in Mecca,” he went on. “The stories of how he and his men tortured their victims and raped the women before they killed them would make your skin crawl, Lucie. When it was over, there was a price on Every’s head—everyone in the world wanted to find him—and he disappeared. Forever. Word was that he was hiding out somewhere in the Atlantic colonies, maybe the Caribbean islands or maybe even Virginia. And he took his share of the treasure with him.”

Clay sat back in his chair, eyes hooded, watching my reaction to his macabre tale. My heart thumped against my chest. Now I understood why Prescott owned the red Jolly Roger flag that hung on the wall next to his wine cellar. It was from a pirate ship that had plundered a century later, but one that showed no mercy for its victims, just like his ancestor Henry Every had done.

“What happened to the treasure?” I asked, although I could guess what he was going to say.

“Some people believe it’s still out there somewhere. Prescott was one of them,” he said in a grim voice. “Do you have any idea how much money he spent tracking down historians, descendants of Henry, traveling to England and Africa and India and all the places Henry supposedly lived to see if he could figure out where that treasure might be?”

“I’m guessing the answer is a lot.”

“Damn right, a lot. Too much.” He picked up his glass and stared into it before drinking. When he looked up he said, “Would you care for some more water?”

“No, thanks.”