‘I’ll see that you get home to Little Creek.’

‘It isn’t my home now.’

‘Isn’t it?’ He met her gaze with a look that seemed to bore into her soul. ‘You were happier when I last met you. Do you really want to live in London?’

‘Never mind me, Jay. What I don’t understand is why you were moored so far upriver? What made it worth the risk?’

‘It was a business deal. You don’t need to know more, Daisy.’

‘I seem to have become part of this venture, whatever it is. I think I deserve to be told the truth, Jay. What have you been doing that makes you constantly on the run from authority? I can’t believe it was because of something you did years ago.’

He stifled a yawn. ‘I’ve been up for two nights running. Could we have this conversation some other time?’

‘No. I’m sorry but you’ve done this to me before. I’m not stupid. I know there’s more to it than bringing a few articles of contraband into the country.’

‘All right. I’ll tell you the truth.’

‘You could start by telling me how you came to be master of the Lazy Jane. You were a poor boy who’d served a year in prison for some petty crime that you did or didn’t commit. That’s what you led me to believe.’

Jay drained his cup and refilled it with coffee so strong that it looked and smelled like tar water. ‘You’re right, of course. The truth is that Lazy Jane belongs to Tattersall, and it was his doing that set me off on the course I took. He saw me as a useful puppet and he threatened me and my family if I didn’t do what he wanted.’

‘Why you?’

‘I was caught poaching on his estate when I was just fourteen. The squire sentenced me to six months hard labour, but when I came out of prison I found two of his men waiting for me at the gate. They took me to a room at an inn and I came face to face with the man who had sent me to prison in the first place.’

‘Squire Tattersall?’

‘Yes, the squire himself. I was given a choice – either I worked for him or my family would suffer the consequences.’

‘But what could he have done?’

‘He could have evicted my family from their cottage, or, as he said, he could blacken my mother’s name by having it put about that she was a wanton before she married Lemuel, and that she didn’t know who my real father was. I didn’t believe him and if I’d been older I might have stood up to him, but I’d just come out of a horrific time in the clink, which is something I wouldn’t wish on anyone.’

‘So what happened then?’

‘I was put to work on board the Lazy Jane and I learned how to sail her from the master, who was good to me and treated me more like a son.’