Grey sighed, pressing his shoulders against the chair to ease the stiffness in his back.

“If they were, I should think humanity would have ceased to exist by now, pressed back into the earth by the accumulated weight of inherited evil.”

Richardson shrugged slightly, whether in acknowledgment or dismissal of the point, Grey couldn’t tell. Richardson turned to the wall of glass panes and looked out, presumably to give himself time to think up a new conversational gambit.

The sun was sinking and the light from the big stern window glittered from a million tiny wavelets, coruscating across the glass, the ceiling—did you call it a ceiling, in a ship?—and across the table at which Grey sat. It flickered over his hands, which were still rather the worse for wear. He flexed them, slowly, considering various nearby objects in terms of their effectiveness as weapons. There was a rather solid-looking clock and the bottle of brandy, but both were some distance away, on the far side of the cabin … God damn it, that was his bottle of brandy! He recognized the handwritten label, even at this distance. The bastard had been burgling his house!

“I beg your pardon?” he said, suddenly aware that Richardson had asked him something.

“I said,” Richardson said, with a pretense of patience, “how do you feel about slavery?” Not getting an immediate response, he said, much less patiently, “You were governor of Jamaica, for God’s sake—surely you’re well acquainted with the institution?”

“I assume that’s a rhetorical question,” Grey said, gingerly touching the healing but still-swollen laceration on his scalp. “But if you insist … yes. I’m reasonably sure I know a great deal more about it than you do. As to my feelings regarding slavery, I deplore it on both philosophical and compassionate grounds. Why? Did you expect me to declare myself in favor of it?”

“You might have.” Richardson looked at him intently for a moment, and then seemed to come to some decision, for he sat down across the table from Grey, meeting his eyes on the level. “But I’m glad you didn’t. Now …” He leaned forward, intent. “Your wife. Or your ex-wife, if you prefer …”

“If you mean Mrs. Fraser,” Grey said politely, “she was in fact never my wife, the marriage between us having been arranged under the false impression that her husband was dead. He’s not.”

“I’m well aware of it.” There was a note of grimness in that remark, and it gave Grey an uneasy feeling in the pit of his stomach.

The clock on the distant table uttered a clear ting!, then did it four more times, just to make its point. Richardson looked over his shoulder at it and made a displeased noise.

“I’ll have to go soon. What I want to know, sir, is whether you know what Mrs. Fraser is.”

Grey stared at him.