"Have you." She looked up at him. "He is deaf, you know. Completely. He did not hear a word you said to him."
For the length of a breath the captain stood perfectly still.
"Deaf," he said.
"Since he was seven. He was taught in London to read speech from the lips. Mrs. Keverne says he does it better than most people hear."
It was very small, what happened to his face. A man less closely watched would not have noticed it; she would not have noticed it herself a day ago. But she had spent the night thinking about faces, and she saw it: the pale eyes going for an instant inward, as though he were turning back the pages of the evening before to see what had been written on them.
Then he bowed.
"How very unfortunate for him," said Captain Calloway. "Good morning, Lady Ormerod."
*
He had been gone perhaps a quarter of an hour when the parlour door burst open without a knock, and Mrs. Keverne stood in it with her cap askew and her face mottled red and white.
"My lady—oh, my lady, I'm sorry to come in so—they've took Jory."
Marian was on her feet. "Who has?"
"Lusty. The constable. With two of them sailors from the brig." The landlady's voice cracked. "They went up into the loft not ten minutes since and came down with him between them and the captain's gold watch in Lusty's hand. Found in his straw, they said. Under his blanket. The captain swore last night it was took off him in the yard while they had hold of the lad, and he never said a word of it to me nor anybody, and now—" She pressed her hand to her mouth. "They've took him to Mr. Trevisa's. The justice. He's to be examined at eleven."