He clipped on his sword and reached for his cocked hat, the gold lace still as bright as the day eighteen months ago when he’d gone to Joshua Miller, the tailor in Falmouth. For two generations the Miller family had been making uniform clothing for the Bolitho family although few could remember how it had all begun. Bolitho had outfitted him on his appointment as flag-lieutenant. That too had been another kindness, characteristic of the man he had come to know so well, even if he still did not fully understand him. His charisma, which he himself did not seem to know that he possessed; the way in which those closest to him were ever protective. His little crew as he called them: his burly coxswain Allday his round-shouldered Devonian secretary Yovell, and not least his personal servant Ozzard, a man without a past.

He put some money on the table for his sister. She would get precious little from her miserly husband. Avery had heard him leave the vicarage very early on some mission of mercy, or to murmur a few words before a local felon was dropped from the gallows. He smiled to himself. If he was really a man of God, the Lord should be warned to begin recruiting his own little crew!

The door opened and his sister stood in the passageway, watching him as though unwilling for him to leave.

She had the same dark hair as Avery and her eyes, like hebrother’s, were tawny, like a cat’s. Apart from that, there was little resemblance. He found it hard to accept that she was only twenty-six, her body worn out by child-bearing. She had four children but had lost two others along the way. It was harder still to recall her as a girl. She had been lovely then.

She said, "The carter’s here, George. He’ll take your chest to the stage at the King’s Arms." She stared at him as he took her and held her closely. "I know you must go, George, but it’s been so lovely to have you here. To talk, and that…" When she was distressed, her Dorset accent was more pronounced.