“Compare it to one of our country villages and you can imagine the size, and how everyone would know everyone else, which tends to keep down crime. The only reason they even had a prison on the island was it had many years ago been converted from an old fort, which was no longer in use. But we were well fed for our brief sojourn, and not mistreated. The worst part of it all was our boredom—they had yet to decide how to put us to work—and our outrage and sense of hopelessness. In fact, we spent all our time there plotting escape, which we probably would have succeeded at eventually had we been forced to stay there much longer.”

“What happened to Peter Heston?”

“Considering he went berserk in town when he saw his wife there, and tried once again to kill her, proving to everyone just how crazy he is now, he’s been moved to another island that has a religious order which runs a house to care for the aged and mentally imbalanced. He’ll live out his days under the supervision of the nuns there.”

“And the townspeople who convicted you out of hand, based on one man’s word?”

“Oh, they were duly repentant, so much so that we have been given exclusive shipping rights to all their crops for the next five years.”

Larissa raised a brow at her father’s new grin. “You find that adequate recompense?”

“Hardly.” He chuckled. “Particularly after it came to light that the island was dying due to being so far off the normal shipping lines that they couldn’t get ships to come their way.”

She huffed indignantly. “So you will be a benefit to them if you agree to contract their crops.”

“Certainly, but it satisfied my own goals,” he replied. “I will in fact probably have to buy another ship or two to accommodate an entire island—now that I know my old markets are available again.”

She could have wished that the conversation had not turned indirectly to the Everetts. But the fact was inescapable that had Albert Everett not forced her father to seek new markets in the West Indies because he stole his old ones, he wouldn’t have spent time in prison, would never have had to leave England, so they wouldn’t have lost their house—and she wouldn’t have met Vincent.

“I am glad you can find something amusing about all this,” she said bitterly. “I can’t. I thought you were dead. I thought nothing else could have kept you away from home for so long. I imagined shipwrecks, horrible storms, yes, even pirates. Never would I have imagined you detained in a prison, because I know you would never do anything that might break any laws.”