Libby’s brows knotted. Had Mr. Tremayne mentioned a brother Wednesday night? Yes, that was right. One named Morgan, who had played pirate prince and princess with him and Beth. “Mr. Oliver Tremayne. The clergyman.” The Botanist. The one who could pull her deepest heart to the surface with one well-aimed question and then look straight to her very soul.

Lottie nodded. “The younger. Well, now the only one. The older one passed away a few years ago, I’m told, but I didn’t know when you may have met him. Quite a curious family.”

She oughtn’t to encourage the gossip. She could hear Mabena in her head even now, scowling over the audacity of a stranger thinking she knew anything about an islander she’d never even met. And it took only a syllable to get Lottie really going. But curiosity burned like the sun on the sand, making an “Oh?” emerge before she could stop it.

Lottie leaned closer. “They’ve an estate in Cornwall, you know—not very large, but well enough situated that the Tremaynes have always been somewhat accepted in society, when they choose to enter it. But they haven’t often, not for generations. They’ve been here instead. From what Emily said that Beth told her, once upon a time they had a connection with the Lord Proprietor himself. Or was it the Duke of Cornwall? At any rate, their family was granted a permanent lease of a plot of land near the Tresco abbey, and ever since then, they’ve been here more than on their actual estate on the mainland.”

While Lottie paused for breath, Libby said, “What’s so odd about that?” She certainly couldn’t blame them for staying on these beautiful islands.

Her friend gave her a look of complete shock. “They’ve scarcely been to London in decades! The current Mr. Tremayne’s father, you see, didn’t marry a gentleman’s daughter—he married an islander. Which was frowned upon by fashionable society.”

Lottie walked as fast as she talked, and already Libby could see the familiar lines of the garrison wall. “I don’t see why that’s all that curious either. Such things happen.”

“Not outside the pages of one of Mother’s novels—not very often, anyway. But regardless, he married this local girl, and they had three children. Morgan was the eldest son, then the one you met, Oliver. And Beth was the youngest. Then, a few years ago, the parents were killed when a storm came up suddenly and caught them out at sea. Their boat went down.”