The man’s guilty eyes met James’s gaze over his son’s head. “Rob,” he said, patting the boy’s back. “Oh, Rob.”

Rob was fawning like a puppy. “Where’ve you been?” he said. “We didn’t know! We’ve been waiting and waiting! We thought you were drowned!”

James saw that the stranger was looking at him with a sort of desperation, as one man to another, in this terrible failure of fatherhood.

“They thought you had been pressed into the navy,” James prompted.

“Ah! I was. That I was!” the man said, suddenly glib. He hugged his son and then stepped back to see his face. “I didn’t recognize you, you’ve grown so tall. And dressed so fine! I can see you’ve done well enough without me!”

“We haven’t! Where’ve you been?” Rob insisted.

“It’s a long story,” the man said. “And I’ll tell you all of it some day.”

“Why didn’t you come home?”

“Why didn’t I come home? Why, I couldn’t come home, that’s why!”

“But why not?”

“Because I was pressed, Son. Snatched up by the navy press gang off my boat and taken to serve in the navy for the parliament. Served as a common seaman and then rose through the ranks since I knew the seas around Sealsea Island and all the way to the Downs.”

“But why didn’t you send a message to Ma?”

“Bless you, they don’t let you go ashore! They don’t give you high days and holy days off! I was on my ship and spoke to no one but the other poor curs who were pressed alongside me.”

James watched Alinor’s son, raised to love and trust, struggle to believe his father. “You couldn’t even get a message to us? Because we waited and waited for you to come, and Ma still doesn’t know if you’re alive or dead. I’ll have to tell her when I get home. She’ll hardly believe me! She’s been waiting. We’ve all been waiting for you to come home!”

“Oh, she knows.” He nodded rapidly. “It’s better for her to act as if she doesn’t. But you know your ma, Son. A woman like that—she knows in her bones. She knows in her waters. She doesn’t need a message to tell her what’s what. The wind and the waves tell her. The moon whispers to her. The birds in her hedge are her familiars. God knows what she knows and what she doesn’t know, but you needn’t worry about her, ever.”

An icy sweat of sheer hatred washed over James as he saw the boy struggling to comprehend this, the puzzled frown on his young face, as the faithless father told the boy that his mother was faithless too.

“I don’t think she does know,” Rob said tentatively. “She would’ve told us when we asked where you were.”

“Well, you’re doing well enough for yourself anyway,” his father said cheerfully. “Fine clothes and fine friends.” He turned to James. “I’m Zachary Reekie,” he said. “Captain of the coastal trader Jessie.”