“My lawyer told me of a way we might be able to spring Luke from jail,” she said as she tugged at the fingertips of her gloves to pull them off. “I’ll need help.”

“I’ll give you whatever you need,” Gray said instantly, but then again, he didn’t know what she was about to propose.

“We need to convince Luke to change his plea,” she said. “We get a lawyer in Cuba to file paperwork with the provisional government proclaiming his innocence. He’ll have to come up with some sort of explanation for his initial guilty plea, but Luke is good at that. He can run rings around anyone.”

Gray shook his head. “I’ve been begging him to change his plea from the beginning, but he refuses. He’s been reading the Bible. He swears he’s a new man and won’t lie.”

“And you believe that?” Luke had never been devout, but a fib like that would get Gray off his back. She and Luke were experts in dodging Gray’s nagging, fusty ways.

“I don’t know what to believe anymore,” Gray said, pacing before the fireplace. “I’ve been trying ever since Luke was arrested to get him to fight in his defense, and he refuses.”

“Maybe I can persuade him.”

He cocked a brow at her. “How?”

“I’ll go to Cuba and talk to him in person. If anyone can persuade him, I can.”

“What then?”

“Then we pay a fortune in bail to get him released until the trial. And then we smuggle him onto the Pelican and overseas to freedom.”

Gray’s breath left him in a rush as he collapsed into a chair. “It will never work. He’s guilty as sin, and they’ll never grant him bail.”

“The Americans won’t, but he’s in a Cuban jail, and they might. Their island is in tatters. Their roads and bridges and freshwater systems have all been wiped out by the war. You don’t think they’d be happy to get their hands on a quick infusion of cash?”

Gray shifted in the chair, his face tense in concentration. “And then Luke makes a run for it?”

“Then Luke makes a run for it,” she confirmed.

The family’s steamship, a mighty cargo vessel called the Pelican, was currently on a run back from Madagascar, loaded down with spices and rare vanilla beans. If Luke got released on bail, he could sail away on the Pelican, but it meant he’d never be able to come back to the United States. He’d have to make his home in Europe or Africa or the Far East. Their family would be permanently fractured. Luke would never walk her down the aisle or spoil her children. In saving him, she would lose him forever, but it would be worth it.