“Yes. He kept us all alive here.”
“You have just come from England?” Olivia asked.
“Yes,” said the captain. “We sailed at the end of July. Your Excellency, I wouldn’t go down the river with such another convoy. Not if the King knighted me.”
Olivia was not quite sure of the technical terms, so she answered nothing, but smiled a smile of interested sympathy. She remembered suddenly that perhaps he had brought mails. She asked him.
“Mails? Yes, madam. Yes. Yes. Yes. Oh I’ve brought the mails. They’re in his Excellency’s hands.”
“None for you, Mrs. Stukeley, I’m afraid,” said Howard. “Captain Margaret had one.”
“Captain Margaret?” said Lewin quickly. “Do you know a Captain Margaret here?”
Stukeley pushed back his chair, and seemed to fumble in his pocket. Margaret looked up quickly from the cracking of a nut.
“I am he,” he said quietly.
“You are he, are you? I missed your name just now,” said Lewin, putting his hand within his coat.