The captain recovered first. He took a step toward her, and Jory saw his profile: *—and who the devil may you be, madam, to give orders to my men?*
The hood turned toward the boatswain instead of the captain. Her mouth moved. Jory caught it because she did not hurry.
*Mr. Polgrave. Put that rope down.*
The boatswain's hand opened. The knotted rope fell on the wet cobbles with a slap Jory felt rather than heard. The old man stared at the cloaked figure as if he had seen a ghost walk in under the arch, and then he pulled off his hat, and his lips formed two words, and Jory, who had seen men say a great many things in that yard, had never seen anyone say anything with quite that mixture of dread and relief.
*Lady Ormerod.*
The captain's face did not move. But Jory, watching it, saw the colour leave it all at once, the way the colour leaves the sea when a cloud goes over the sun.
II.
She had not meant to be known. That was the first thing Marian Ormerod thought, standing in the wet archway with her heart going like a drum under the wool of her cloak: that she had come twelve miles in a hired chaise under the name of Mrs. Grey, with Wilmot and one bandbox and no crest on the door, precisely so that no one in Brackenmouth would know she was there until she chose to be known, and that she had undone it all with one word in less than a minute.
She did not regret the word. She regretted only that she had been forced to it.
"Captain Calloway," she said, and was pleased to find her voice level. "I believe we have not met. My late husband's nephew engaged you, I think, while I was still in black. You will forgive me if I say I had pictured you differently."
The captain bowed. It was a good bow, a quarter-deck bow, exactly as deep as it needed to be and not a hair deeper. "Your ladyship. Had I known you were in Brackenmouth I should have waited upon you. Mr. Ormerod gave me to understand you did not concern yourself with the firm's shipping."
"Mr. Ormerod gives a great many people to understand a great many things." She looked at the young man the seamen had been holding. They had let him go, and he stood by himself in the middle of the yard with the rain on his bare head, very straight. He was perhaps four- or five-and-twenty, thin, dark-haired, in a stable waistcoat and shirtsleeves, and he was watching her face with a fixed, unnerving attention that she did not understand. "What has he done?"