“Yes, I suppose the immediate threat would have been of more concern,” she agreed. “But you said the man’s house hadn’t really burned down. Why weren’t you released after that was discovered.”

“No, I said no one else had done it to him,” he corrected her.

She blinked. “He burned down his own house?”

George nodded. “But that didn’t come to light soon enough to keep us out of prison. And at the time, the magistrate had two completely conflicting accounts on the matter, so whom do you think he would be inclined to believe?”

“Heston, of course.”

“Exactly. The man’s plantation really had burned to the ground. Our ship’s guns hadn’t been fired. These were facts that we were assured were both going to be investigated right after we were all secured in the jail. But too much time had passed, on getting us secured and getting the crowd to finally disperse. And since it wasn’t immediately proven that the guns weren’t heated the least bit from use, it couldn’t be proven at all. Yet there was a burned-down plantation, proof for the other side, and the word of one of their own well-known and respected citizens.”

Larissa shook her head. “How did the truth finally get discovered?”

“When Peter Heston’s wife finally returned to the island. She had been there that day when Heston went completely mad. She had known his mind wasn’t quite right for a long time, but she had never warned anyone, since his increasingly strange behavior had seemed harmless. But early that morning she came upon him starting the fires. He was raving that there were pirates hiding on the property and the only way to flush them out was to give them no place to hide by burning everything to the ground.”

“There weren’t any, though?”

“No, it was all in his mind. She tried to stop him, of course. But he didn’t recognize her. He thought her one of the pirates and tried to kill her as well.”

“How horrible for her.”

“Yes, though she did manage to escape, and by the quickest means possible. Unfortunately, that was by boat. They lived on the coast, had their own small dock where Heston kept a fishing vessel. She used that, leaving the island completely rather than going to town to get help.”

“I think I would have rather been out in the water where he couldn’t reach me than still on the island where he might catch up to me, if I were her.”