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six months ago for his years of devoted public service to his country. We're as anxious to avoid such a—"
    "You can't do that," Anna cried, holding on to the back of the room's only chair for support. "Jourdaine Shipbuilding is a hundred and twenty years old, my great-great-grandfather built it from nothing! There are men who work for us now whose grandfathers and great-grandfathers worked there all of
their
lives. This is outrageous! Jourdaine is a good company, a principled company, you can't—"
    "I'm sorry, but there's more at stake here than that, as I think you know. England's neutrality in the Civil War in America is in a precarious state. There are plenty of men in Parliament just waiting for a chance to enter the conflict on the South's side, and another English merchantman secretly converted to a Confederate warship is all it would take, the North has never believed in our government's claims of ignorance."
    Anna flung away from him and began to pace back and forth across the tiny space between the bed and the door. Both men pressed backwards to give her more room; she wouldn't sit down and so they stood, backs against the wall, as uncomfortable with their stifling proximity as she. The storm was over; it had blown itself out in the night. Blue sea met blue sky on the distant horizon, and the light wind blowing in through the open porthole smelled clean and fresh.
    "Mrs. Bal—"
    "Mr. Dietz." She stopped pacing and faced him. She wanted no more of his well-reasoned arguments; her brain was still too sluggish to counter them. "Answer me this. How can you, or you, Aiden! How can you stand there and ask me, in good conscience, to live on intimate terms for an indefinite length of time with a total stranger, a man you tell me is a murderer? Even assuming that I survived that ordeal, do you have any idea what would become of me if the slightest hint of such an arrangement ever became known? Do you have any conception of what my reputation would be worth? Or how it would hurt my family?"
    "As to that, I've been given to understand that yours is not a particularly close or loving family," said Dietz.
    Anna flashed a look of astonishment at Aiden; he had the grace to flush with embarrassment and turn away.
    "But apart from that, O'Dunne will travel with you, and you'll be guarded at all times. You'll be safe, and so will your secret. No one but the three of us and Mr. Flowers, plus a few well-placed officials high in the Ministry, very high, I might say, will ever know. Anyway," he added, annoyed by her mutinous profile, "it's done. You're halfway to Italy, you're already 'compromised,' if you choose to look at it that way."
    "You... you're saying I have no choice?"
    "None that I can see." A moment passed and then his voice softened. "Try to look at it from our point of view. Concealing your husband's death is the only way to discover whether he really meant to sell the
Morning Star
to the South, something I should think you'd want to know as much as we do."
    "He didn't!"
    "In the second place, the government wants to learn who his contacts were among the Confederates so that they can be warned off or otherwise dealt with. Keeping him 'alive' would give us that opportunity."
    "Rubbish!"
    "And in the third place, since it's inconceivable to us that your husband acted alone, we're interested in finding out who at Jourdaine Shipbuilding might try to get in touch with Brodie while he's pretending to be Nick Balfour."
    She made an inarticulate sound of frustration and fury and turned toward O'Dunne. "What have they done with Nicholas's body?" she demanded.
    The lawyer looked startled. "They've buried him."
    "Where? In an unmarked grave?"
    He shifted uncomfortably. "Only for a little while, Anna. When this is over they'll arrange for his 'death.' He'll have a real burial then, as your husband."
    Rebellion rose in her like bile. "I won't do it. I don't care about any of the consequences. What you're asking is monstrous ghoulish.