Lady Catherine Somervell reined in the big mare and patted her neck with a gloved hand.

"Not long now, Tamara. We’ll soon be home."

Then she sat very still and upright in the saddle, her dark eyes looking out across the sea. It was close to noon on this first day of March 1811, and a strange misty vapour had already covered the track she had taken to visit John Allday and his new wife Unis. She could not believe that they had all been left alone for so long, untroubled by the Admiralty in London. Two and a half months, the longest time she and Richard Bolitho had ever spent together in their own home in Cornwall.

She tossed the fur-lined hood from her head and the damp air brought more colour to her face. When she looked directly south, Rosemullion Head, which guarded the mouth of the Helford River, was also lost in mist, and it was only three miles distant. She was on the upper coastal track, much of the lower one having crumbled into the sea in the January storms.

And yet there were signs of spring. Wagtails darting along the bank of the Helford River in their quaint diving, haphazard flight; jackdaws too, like companionable clerics on the stone walls. The ragged trees that crested the nearest hill were still leafless, their stooping branches shining from a sudden fall of rain. Nevertheless there were tiny brush strokes of yellow to mark the early daffodils that flourished there, despite the salt spray from the Channel and the Western Approaches.

Catherine urged the mare forward again, her mind lingering on the past, clinging to the weeks of freedom they had enjoyed without restraint.