There had been another officer with him, a lieutenant, but Ferguson had noticed only Adam Bolitho and the beautiful woman beside him.

It had reminded him painfully of the day in that same church when a memorial service had been conducted following the news that Sir Richard and his mistress had been lost in the wreck of the Golden Plover off the African coast. Many of the same people had been there, as well as Bolitho’s wife. Ferguson could remember her look of utter disbelief when one of Adam’s officers had burst in with the revelation that Bolitho and his companions were alive, and had been rescued against all odds. And when Lady Catherine’s part had become known, how she had given hope and faith to the survivors in that open boat, she had been taken to their hearts. It had seemed to sweep aside the scandal, and the outrage which had been previously voiced at their liaison.

Together or alone, Ferguson could see them clearly. Catherine, her dark hair streaming unchecked in the wind while she walked on the cliff path, or paused by the stile where he had seen them once, as if to watch some approaching ship. Perhaps hoping…

Now there was no hope, and her man, her lover and the nation’s hero, was buried at sea. Near his old Hyperion, where so many had died, men Ferguson had never forgotten. The same ship Adam had joined as a fourteen-year-old midshipman. Nancy, Lady Roxby, would be remembering that too, Adam in a captain’s uniform, but to her still the boy who had walked from Penzance when his mother had died. The name “Bolitho” written on a scrap of paper was all he had had. And now he was the last Bolitho.

There were to be other, grander ceremonies in the near future, in Plymouth, and then at Westminster Abbey, and he wondered if Lady Catherine would go to London and risk the prying eyes and the jealous tongues which had dogged her relationship with the nation’s hero.

He heard a step in the yard and guessed it was Young Matthew, the senior coachman, making his rounds, visiting the horses, his dog Bosun puffing slowly behind him. Old now, the dog was partly deaf and had failing eyesight, but no stranger would ever pass him without his croaking bark.