“You say she definitely will not give the letter to anyone except myself?”
“She’s been arguing with me, Your Grace, for nigh on fifteen minutes. I tells her in our country we has servants to carry things like letters to the Master. But she sticks to her guns, so to speak, and nothing I can say’ll move her!”
The Steward who had been in his service for a long time spoke in such an aggrieved fashion that the Duke laughed.
“Very well, Stevens. Bring the woman down and take care she doesn’t steal anything on the way.”
“You can be sure of that, Your Grace!”
Stevens left him and the Duke, with a faint smile on his lips, put down the newspaper and rose to sit at his flat-topped desk that stood at one end of the cabin.
He thought perhaps that he was making a mistake in allowing the woman to c
