And how could she have left all this? The family, the community that knew her and loved her? The place that called her its own? Or maybe it didn’t. Maybe Mabena was one of those born here but destined to leave. “Do the islands not know her name?”

Mr. Gibson chuckled. “More than that, my lady. They’ve always been her heart.”

Her stomach hurt. How could that be, given her silence about them? “Then how could she leave?”

“Well.” He didn’t say the word like a storyteller. He said it like someone who had given the matter a lot of thought and reached a logical and unavoidable conclusion. “Because when the island is your heart, and your heart is broken . . . what are you to do but break ties with the island?” He patted her shoulder and then slid his arm from around her, so he could grip her elbow to help her over the final rise of sand, back onto pavement. “But she’s back now.”

Her feet wanted to drift to a halt again. Maybe even turn her around and run back down to the beach, where the morning had been bright and beautiful. “You think she’ll stay.”

“I know she will—though she’s not ready to admit it yet.”

But—but if Mabena stayed here, sent Libby home alone at the end of summer . . . If she was expected to just face her family again, face society again, face London again without anyone who understood her and championed her, if only in the privacy of her own room . . .

“Don’t want to lose your maid, I take it?”

Her face probably looked as sick as her stomach felt. “I don’t care about the maid part. But I don’t want to lose Mabena.”

“Well then. The answer’s simple enough.” He reached up and chucked her under the chin in the way Papa used to do. “You’ll just have to stay too.”

Even though there was no way Mama and Bram would ever allow it, the idea was alluring. Except that she had a sinking fear that Mabena would disagree. Loudly.

And she wasn’t so sure she could handle hearing it.

12

Mabena may not much fancy the kitten who was once again stalking through the cottage as the promised squall raged away the afternoon, but she’d always liked puppies. And she felt as though she’d kicked one, the way Libby avoided her gaze and went out of her way to keep from crossing Mabena’s path for the last eight hours, though she had still been steaming too much over Casek Wearne’s audacity to really notice it when they were in the Abbey Gardens. But by the time they climbed into her lovely little sloop and started for St. Mary’s, she could no longer ignore the slump of the lady’s shoulders.