“But you’re content here. You can speak French all you like. And Fanny, she has so much to distract her. I don’t think she’ll even miss me.”

Marguerite pinched the muslin elbows of her nightdress.

“I’m not worried about Fanny,” she said. “It’s you.”

“But I’ve often traveled alone.”

“That you’ll leave us here and never come back.”

“Of course I’ll come back.”

She hugged herself closer and pursed her quivering lips. Marguerite’s face always gave her away. I put my hand on her cheek and tilted her head to meet mine.

“I won’t hurt myself, Marguerite. I promise you. I’ll come back.”

She nodded, but the worry on her face remained.

“Ça va aller,” I said to her. “Tout ira bien.”

To see the careening of a three-masted sailing ship—a heaving down at high tide—as Backman and I did at Strömstad, is to watch mere men and their ropes topple a wounded giant against her will and nature. How strange it was to see the dignified Maria and Margarethe felled and lying on one side, sails torn, masts snapped in two, her hull exposed with its rotting craters and holes—barnacles, shipworms, and seaweed clinging to it, feeding away. I felt a keen sympathy for her plight. It was so like my own.

“Is she beyond repair?” I asked Backman.

“No, but she’ll be here a good two months, I guess. And cost a good deal.”

“Will Imlay have to pay?”

“I’m supposing that’s why you’re here.”

“But the silver’s disappeared. It seems unlikely we’ll recover it.”

“Then it’s on you to persuade someone to pay for what was lost, isn’t it?”

“Wouldn’t the judge do that, if he finds for us?”

“It’s a complicated business,” said Backman. “I’m supposing Imlay would rather rely on the pressure you might bring to bear, to settle with someone. No one wants the stain of a matter like this.”

“Well, why not Ellefsen?” I said. “His family’s got money enough.”

“If he’s the one who lost it,” he said with a shrug.