As a prisoner-of-war Avery had endured agony and despair at the hands of the French surgeons. It was not that they had not cared or been indifferent to his suffering. Their lack of resources had been a direct result of the English blockade, an irony he often remembered.

The brief Peace of Amiens, which had served only to allow the old enemies to lick their wounds and restore their ships and defences, had led to Avery’s early discharge, an exchange with one of the French prisoners. On his return to England there had been no congratulations or rewards for his past bravery. Instead he had faced a court martial. Eventually he had been found not guilty of cowardice or of hazarding the ship. But the little Jolie had struck her colours to the enemy so, wounded or not, he was reprimanded, and would have remained a lieutenant for the rest of his service.

Until that day some eighteen months ago when Bolitho had given him the post of flag-lieutenant. It had been a new door opening for Avery, a new life, which he had learned to share with one of England’s heroes: a man whose deeds and courage had stirred the heart of a nation.

He smiled at himself in the glass and saw the younger man appear. For only a moment his habitual expression of wariness vanished, as did the lines around his mouth. But the streaks of grey in his dark brown hair and the stiff way he held his shoulder, as the result of his wound and its treatment, gave the lie to what he saw.

He heard someone at the front door and glanced around his room: a bare, simple place without personality Like the house itself, the vicarage where his father, a strict but kindly man, had brought him up. Avery’s sister Ethel, who herself had married a clergyman when their father had been killed by a runaway horse in the street, still lived here with her husband.