The Island Heirs — Jeanne Judson

On a visit to the Virgin Islands, eighteen-year-old Helen Iversen becomes the pawn in a strange game of intrigue played by a domineering grandmother and her attractive grandson.

Helen Iversen's visit to St. Thomas in the Virgin Island to nurse the grandmother she had never seen would have been an enchanting adventure if, after her arrival, she had not discovered that she had been sent on approval, as it were, as a possible wife for her second cousin, Nels Iversen.

Everyone approved except Barbie North, who wanted the handsome and charming Nels for herself, and Helen. Even Helen was tempted -- Nels was agreeable and attractive, and if they were to marry, Madame Iversen would leave them beautiful “Queen's Fancy” and all her considerable weath.

Even Nels' friend, Hugh Tredwell, had reasons of his own for wanting the marriage -- reasons connected with what he called “modern piracy.”

However, Nels, adored by his grandmother though he was, could not be certain of his own future. Old Madame Iversen changed her will over and over again, her conscience troubled by her long-ago rejection of her only daughter, Dagmar, when Dagmar married a man of whom she didn't approve. There was something else troubling the grand dame -- something in connection with John Charles Davies, an artist who was building his house too close to “Queen's Fancy.”

Then a doctor from the States confirmed the local doctor's diagnosis that Madame Iversen had only a few weeks to live -- might, indeed, die at any moment.

More than once, Helen determined to take the first plane back to Westchester, but pity for the old woman, the enchantment of the islands, and the very real affection that had sprung up between the woman of eighty and the girl of eighteen held her there. And there was another factor -- something that even Helen would not admit to herself…