The maid stamped back into the hall and slammed the front door against the noise and glare of the quayside so he felt that he was at last admitted into the house, and not just delivered into the hall like a bale of goods.

“Will she see me? Mrs. Reekie?” he asked, stumbling on the name.

Before she could answer, a door farther down the hall opened, and a woman in her thirties stepped over the raised threshold into the hall. She wore the dark respectable gown of a merchant’s wife, and a plain working apron over it, tied tightly at the curve of her waist. Her collar was modestly high, plain and white, unfashionable in these extravagant days. Her golden brown hair was combed back and almost completely hidden under a white cap. She had lines at the corners of her eyes and a deep groove in her forehead from frowning. She did not lower her eyes like a puritan woman, nor did she coquet like a courtier. Once again, with a sense of dread, James met the direct unfriendly gaze of Alys Stoney.

“You,” she said without surprise. “After all this time.”

“I,” he agreed, and bowed low to her. “After twenty-one years.”

“This isn’t a good time,” she said bluntly.

“I could not come before. May I speak with you?”

She barely inclined her head in reply. “I suppose you’ll want to come in,” she said gracelessly and led the way into the adjoining room, indicating that he should step over the raised threshold. A small window gave the view of the distant bank of the river, obscured by masts and lashed sails, and the noisy quay before the house where the lumpers were still loading the wagon, and rolling barrels into the warehouse. She dropped the window blind so that the men working on the quay could not see her direct him towards a plain wooden chair. He took a seat, as she paused, one hand on the mantelpiece, gazing down into the empty grate as if she were a judge, standing over him, considering sentence.

“I sent money, every year,” he said awkwardly.

“I know,” she said. “You sent one Louis d’Or. I took it.”

“She never replied to my letters.”

“She never saw them.”

He felt himself gasp as if she had winded him. “My letters were addressed to her.”

She shrugged as if she cared for nothing.

“In honor, you should have given them to her. They were private.”

She looked completely indifferent.

“By law, by the laws of this land, they belong to her, or they should have been returned to me,” he protested.

Briefly, she glanced at him. “I don’t think either of us have much to do with the law.”

“Actually, I am now a justice of the peace in my shire,” he said stiffly. “And a member of the House of Commons. I uphold the law.”

As she bowed her head, he saw the sarcastic gleam in her eyes. “Pardon me, Your Honor! But I can’t return them as I burned them.”