“You didn’t hear about this from me,” Mr. Alphonse said as he returned to his side of the desk. “I was merely filling you in on how some people might handle a situation like this. Talk it over with your older brother, and if after due consideration you’d still like me to file for a presidential pardon, I shall be happy to assist. Good day to you, Miss Delacroix.”

Mr. Alphonse was right. She needed to talk to Gray. She would need a lot of help and money to pull this off, which meant she needed to recruit her older brother to the cause.

Gray had always been more like a father than a brother to her. Her earliest memory was of running across the room to fling herself into his arms when he returned from an overseas voyage. She had idolized him, but Luke’s arrest threw a bomb into their relationship, for it was the woman in Gray’s life who’d turned Luke in.

Annabelle Larkin was a homespun girl from Kansas who shared Gray’s irrational obsession with plants, and they’d quickly fallen in love last spring. It was Annabelle’s unusual closeness to Gray that brought her to the attention of the government, for they’d long suspected someone in the Delacroix household of helping the insurgency in Cuba. They pressured Annabelle to spy, and she was the one who’d turned over the evidence that condemned Luke.

Gray forgave Annabelle and married her, an outrage that still incensed Caroline. Then again, Gray believed Luke was guilty, and Caroline knew he wasn’t. Gray did his best to mitigate Luke’s abominable conditions in the Cuban jail, but he didn’t believe in Luke’s innocence, and for that she couldn’t quite forgive him.

Nevertheless, she needed his help. The plan her lawyer had outlined would require a lot of money and the use of a steamship. Gray had both. She deliberately planned her visit for a time Annabelle would be out of the house.

“Caroline,” Gray said warmly as he greeted her in the foyer of his house. “How are plans for the inauguration going?”

“Fine,” she said briskly, heading into the parlor. For a man with obscene riches, the family townhouse where Gray lived was a modest affair, close to the harbor and furnished with well-worn antiques suited to his old-world formality.

She immediately noticed the changes that had come with his marriage. A vibrant potted sunflower was positioned on the fireplace hearth, and she scowled at it.

Gray noticed. “Annabelle grows them in the experimental greenhouse at the Department of Agriculture,” he said.

Caroline turned her chair to avoid looking at evidence of Annabelle’s unwelcome presence. They had business to discuss, and she needed to avoid obsessing over Annabelle’s betrayal of Luke.