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allowed a week, two at the most, to conduct his business. He had promised to be home by the beginning of November. It was now a full month beyond that. Bad weather might be responsible for some delay, but four weeks worth?
    No, she could no longer hide from the fact that something must have gone terribly wrong on his journey. Ships were lost at sea all the time, with no one ever really knowing what had happened. There were even pirates rumored to still roam the very waters that their father would have sailed through, ready to pounce on a heavily laden merchantman. She’d had time and plenty to imagine the worst, shipwrecked, stranded on a deserted island, starving …
    Her worry had become so intense it now seemed a part of her. She wanted desperately to share it with someone, needed a shoulder to cry on, but she had to do without either. She had to be strong for Thomas’s sake, to continue to assure him that everything would be all right, when she no longer believed that it would.
    To that end she said, “The best-laid plans don’t always lie down right, Tommy. Father hoped to secure a new market in New Providence, but what if there was none there? He would have had to sail to the next island then, wouldn’t he? And if there was nothing there, either?”
    “But why did he have to sail so far when he could have found a new market closer to home?”
    She gave her brother a stern look. “Haven’t we discussed this before, and several times? Weren’t you listening to me the last time?”
    “I always listen to you,” he grumbled. “You just don’t always make sense.”
    She didn’t take him to task for that, knew very well that he was merely being defensive because his illness was making him forgetful. He’d either been half-asleep during most of their recent conversations, or his fever had been raging, so it was no wonder he couldn’t remember them all.
    “Well, let’s see if we can both make sense out of what happened, because I still don’t understand it all either,” she told him, hoping that would make him feel better. “Most companies in the same line of business enjoy some friendly or even not so friendly competition. That’s the nature of business, you’ll agree?” She waited a moment. He nodded. She continued, “But when one bad apple gets into the pot, it can ruin the whole pot.”
    “Can you stick to specifics please?”
    She “tsked,” but did. “That new shipping line that opened late last summer, The Winds line, I believe it was called, was a welcome addition to a thriving market—until they proved to be completely underhanded. Instead ofseeking their own markets, they set about stealing those already in good hands.”
    “Father’s?”
    “Not just Father’s, though they did seem to single him out the most. He never told me about it himself. He wouldn’t, not wanting to worry me. What I know, I overheard when his captains or clerk came to the house. Apparently The Winds was trying to put him completely out of business,
and
nearly succeeded. I’d never seen him so furious as he was those last few weeks before he left, after all but one of his ships returned to port without their scheduled cargoes, because The Winds captains had followed his and overpaid in each port.”
    “Even that nice French wine—?”
    “Yes,” she cut in, trying to keep him from talking so much, since that seemed to wear him out, too. “Even he ignored the contract Father had with him to sell to the higher-bidding captain.”
    “But what good is a contract if it can be so easily broken?”
    “From what I heard, they weren’t exactly broken, just some flimsy excuses given as to why the merchandise wouldn’t be forthcoming. The nature of business, I suppose,” Larissa said with a shrug she wasn’t really feeling, adding, “It’s hard to fault the merchants when they had the chance to reap huge, unexpected profits.”
    “I don’t find it hard to fault them a’tall,” he disagreed. “Contracts are