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another swipe. “He’s a rich man, that’s no joke. The richest in town. There’s not a bachelor between here and Perth who doesn’t dream of marrying his daughter.”
    â€œDoes this daughter look anything like her mother?”
    â€œViola? She’s pretty enough, I suppose, but she’s got a tongue like a death adder. Poisoned every man in town.”
    â€œSounds like she needs taming.”
    â€œT’will take a rich man to do it.” The publican wandered back to the bar at the same moment Tom wandered through the door.
    â€œThe laundry will be ready by morning,” Tom said as he pulled up a chair.
    â€œGood, because I’m planning to take an early stroll before we set sail.”
    â€œStroll?” Tom looked perplexed.
    â€œYeah. It seems there’s a part of Broome we haven’t yet seen.”
    â€œWhere, exactly?”
    Archer crossed his arms over his chest and grinned. “The part where my future wife is living.”
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    Viola Somerset despised Broome. For that matter, she despised Australia. When she was a young girl her mother had promised to send her to England to finish her education, but her father had never allowed it. Viola was too willful, he claimed, too intent on having her own way. He was certain that if he allowed her to leave the Southern Hemisphere, he would never see her again. And any chance he had for influencing future generations would be gone forever.
    Pleading with Sebastian hadn’t helped Viola. When she was fourteen she’d starved herself for a week, and in response he had taken to eating all his meals in front of her without offering up a morsel. At fifteen she had given up hope that England might be in her future and begged him to send her to a finishing school in Perth. Viola had claimedthat she needed refinement, that she required all the skills of a proper lady so that someday she could take her place as the wife of the man who would succeed Sebastian.
    Her father had claimed that no finishing school could make a lady out of a girl who was so obviously deceitful.
    Sebastian Somerset was as stubborn as his daughter, and although Viola despised him right along with town and country, she also admired his tenacity. He had gone against conventional wisdom to establish himself in Western Australia, building his empire one lugger and load of pearl shell at a time, until now he was a wealthy man. He had brought his wife and newborn daughter to live in Broome when the town was thought to be no place for white women. And by establishing his family before it was the fashionable thing to do, he had been in the best position to reap the rewards when others followed suit.
    When her father had finally relented long enough to allow Viola to spend her sixteenth year visiting a cousin who lived on a large sheep property in South Australia, Viola had thanked him like a dutiful daughter, while silently promising herself that she would disembark in Adelaide, sell the pearl necklace she was taking as a gift to her aunt and find another ship sailing anywhere that wasn’t Australia.
    She hadn’t, of course. Her cousin Martha had been waiting when she arrived in Adelaide, and Viola had seen immediately that Martha was a kindred spirit. The two girls had spent the next months caught up in the social whirl of the South Australian pastoralists. Viola had attended city balls and country race meetings, whipped high-spirited thoroughbreds over rock-strewn pastures, and danced and flirted at week-long house parties. Martha had taught her to wear her golden curls high on her head and her eveningdresses low on her shoulders, but the art of making a man fall in love with her had come as naturally to Viola as wildflowers in the Wet.
    Finally forced to return to Broome, Viola had carried with her the knowledge that she could control her future by the toss of her curls and the sweep of her long, pale lashes. Sebastian might have plans for her