1825. Amelia Yorke is a destitute teacher with a petunia in a flowerpot outside her dingy Sydneytown cottage. Guy Richmond is a botanist seeking orchids in a Polynesian rainforest and heir to vast lands in New South Wales. They come from different worlds and should never have met, yet come together on the deck of a sailing ship overlooking a spectacular tropical lagoon. On the beach drums threaten. Below them a man desperately paddles for freedom. A man Amelia has never met yet agreed to marry. A man Guy loathes. The man is overtaken by pursuers. Soon aquamarine water is stained by blood. And the lives of Amelia and Guy are changed forever. The Southern Seas Series tells the stories of men and women who - for all sorts of reasons - find themselves on remote coral islands in the 1800's. They include seafarers and missionaries, traders and teachers, adventurers, botanists, artists. They encounter joy and sorrow, beauty and hardship, but most of all life in its fullness.