With deepening concern, Caleb Crowther regarded the young man who was his grandson; he let his anxious eyes rove over the familiar straight and strong features, the dark, well-groomed hair and those intense green eyes that gave Caleb Crowther the odd impression that his grandson was able to see right through him. ‘There’s something on your mind, isn’t there?’ he said now, keeping his gaze on the young man’s face. ‘Out with it, then… let’s hear what you have to say!’ He sensed an imminent battle. All the familiar signs were there. They had battled before on many issues, and no doubt they would battle again on many more. But there was one particular issue on which they could never agree, yet which would not go away. Caleb Crowther’s instincts told him that the very same issue was about to raise its ugly head now.

‘I had a letter from my father this morning,’ Edward began.

‘Oh, yes!… And no doubt he had some very damning things to say about me, did he?’ Caleb Crowther had not expected his grandson to bring Silas Trent into the conversation, nor did he like it. The man was an upstart! Arrogant and obstinate in the matter of his wife, Martha who – encouraged by Caleb Crowther – adamantly refused to leave England in order to join her husband in Australia. Since buying out the trading business which Emma had built up over many years and in which he had been generously offered a partnership, Caleb Crowther’s son-in-law had taken it from strength to strength until now he had secured shipping contracts right around the globe. His only remaining ambition was that Martha, whom he adored in spite of her childish, obstinate ways, should join him in Australia, where they could enjoy the fruits of his labours together. Now that their son Edward had fulfilled his own lifelong desire to qualify as a doctor and had moved out of the family home to be nearer his work, Martha might have been persuaded to go to her husband and remain by his side, if it weren’t for the strong influence exerted over her by her own father.

Caleb Crowther cared not whether Martha should disappear from the face of the earth, so obnoxious was she to him, but he saw her as a means by which he might make Silas Trent pay for having joined forces with his old enemy, Emma Tanner… or Emma Thomas as she had then been. Silas Trent’s unbelievable success, and Emma’s part in it, was a thorn in Caleb Crowther’s side. He could not forgive his son-in-law for going against his advice to ‘stay clear of that woman… there is no love between us, and I want no kin of mine kowtowing to a creature of that sort’.

It was true that Silas had asked Caleb Crowther for a loan in order to save his own dwindling fleet of merchant ships, long before Emma had put her own propositions to him, and it was also true that Caleb Crowther had callously refused his son-in-law’s desperate plea out of hand. Yet he saw Silas’s acceptance of Emma’s offer as being both traitorous and rebellious. He had never forgiven him. He never would!