When, near the end of the Seven Years War, Edward Carlisle’s ship Dartmouth was lost on the shoals inside Cape Henry, he envisaged himself settling down to the life of a wealthy gentleman in Virginia’s capital, Williamsburg, with his wife Chiara. He wouldn’t seek another ship, and he wouldn’t pester their Lordships of the Admiralty; his seagoing days were over. However, it was not to be. He’d always known that there was some dark secret in Chiara’s past, and news from Sardinia made it imperative that it should no longer be ignored. Carlisle embarks on an expedition to a remote corner of the Mediterranean, together with the loyal followers who stayed with him when his ship was lost. It seemed such a simple task, nothing compared to the adventures that he had experienced in the service of King George. Simple, until the full extent of the tortuous and deadly politics of the Angelini family are revealed. ------------------- The seventeenth novel in the Carlisle & Holbrooke series is the first in which our hero experiences a world without war, and the first in which he has to contemplate a life outside the navy, with its uncertainties and its opportunities.