Jan Tucker Mulligan

Smuggler's Legacy: a Breton Sailor's Adventure Jan Tucker Mulligan

Historic Fiction, Action/Adventure.

1802. The ancient seafaring town of Concarneau endures poverty and starvation. Captain and Master Mariner Louis Bedard begrudges God, Napoleon, and the Coast Guard; God, for taking his wife; Napoleon, for escalating taxes and unending cultural persecution; The Coast Guard, for its corruption.

When cholera devastates Concarneau and kills its only healer, remorse and desperation forge a new mission in Bedard; in addition to finding a husband for Nicole, his remaining single daughter, he decides to hire a live-in doctor from faraway Paris, despite the unthinkable price: a year's advance salary. But there's only one way to amass so much coin: Smuggling. For a sailor like Bedard, the intricate and familiar coves of the Breton coast pose no real problem, but now, with Napoleon's new law, capture means life in prison.

Bedard secretly confides in his old friend, the Mayor, who quickly offers to provide the ship, if Bedard will hire the crew. So, on the dark of each new moon, under an alias, Bedard slips the wharf -- right under the nose of the young and clever Coast Guard Lieutenant LaMotte, a despised newcomer.

Eventually LaMotte jails Bedard -- under the alias. (Because of a legal technicality Bedard cannot be prosecuted under anything but his true identity.) Bedard stubbornly withstands his granite trap, but he's accustomed to the open sea; how long can he hold out? 

Bedard's only joy is the daily visits from Nicole, who is unaware of his alias. One morning, in addition to the usual hot breakfast, she brings good news: she has finally fallen in love. Bedard's happiness curdles to horror as she blissfully describes the man.