"Sir."
Sir Josiah turned with his hand on the carriage door. In daylight he looked smaller.
"You've broken me, perhaps," he said. "Perhaps not. I've good counsel, Gideon is dead, and inquiries are slow. I've seen men walk out of worse with their knighthoods polished." He looked past Edmund at the river. "But you've broken the yard, Ned. Without that contract I can carry four hundred and six men till Michaelmas, perhaps. After that, I don't know. Go down to Deptford on Monday and tell the coopers why."
"I'll go with you."
"No." It was said gently and it was final. "That's mine to do. You've done yours."
He turned to Sophia, and for a moment the merchant was gone. In his place stood a heavy, tired man with a butcher's hands, who did not know what to do with them.
"Lady Sophia."
"Sir Josiah." She did not curtsy. She looked at him steadily. "The Friend at Deptford."
He flinched, and then, surprisingly, he almost smiled.
"Six shillings a week," he said. "It isn't enough. It was never going to be enough. You can't pay a debt like that. You can only keep paying it." He climbed into the carriage, heavily, and sat, and then leaned out once more. "Pruett will go on sending it, whatever the Board decides. I'd be obliged if you'd go on taking it. Don't tell them whose it is. It would choke them, and they'd be right to choke."
"I'll think about it," said Sophia.