Having lived most of his life on an island that was all of a square mile in size, Oliver was no stranger to tension among his neighbors. Sometimes through a stormy winter there was little to do but argue with whomever crossed your path. But he never liked sensing that angry rod between two people, holding them six feet apart even if they were standing shoulder to shoulder. The mirror erected between them that kept them from seeing each other and showed them only their own frustrations, their own pains.

After the note that came from Mabena, saying she’d seen Beth, he’d expected her and Lady Elizabeth to arrive on Tresco Saturday evening bursting with whatever story they had to tell. Eager—if anxious—to put the finishing touches on their plan for tonight’s visit to Piper’s Hole. Instead, they’d stepped out of Mabena’s boat with a curtain of silence draping them. The kind that wasn’t stiff enough to speak of an argument only minutes past, but whose very heaviness said it had persisted far too long already.

He’d shot Mabena a silent question, but she’d pretended not to see it. As she always did when she didn’t want to address something. No, she’d just shouldered the overnight bags they’d both brought and said with false cheer that she’d better go and see her parents straightaway. He’d taken Lady Elizabeth’s arm and walked with her, but her silence only grew deeper, if that were possible.

Perhaps it was insight that told him she, then, had been the injured party, rather than the injuring one. Perhaps it was bias—he tended to assume that when someone had that windblown, storm-struck look in their eyes, the tempest named Mabena was to blame. Either way, he didn’t know whether to assure the lady that it would blow over, leave it alone entirely, or try to wheedle more information out of her.